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EDUCATION 

FEOM A NATIOITAL STANDPOINT 



ALFRED EOUILLEE 



TRANSLATED ANT) EDITED, WITH A PREFACE 

By W. J. GREENSTREET, M. A. 

ST. John's college, Cambridge 

HEAD MASTER OF THE MARLING SCHOOL, STROUD 

WITH A PREFACE 

By WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A.M., LL.D. 

UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 



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By D. APPLETON AND COIMPANY. 



Printed at the 
Appleton Press, U. S. A. 



EDITOE'S PEEFACE. 



Since the national disaster of 1870, France has 
struggled to rebuild itself from within. There is no 
more important spectacle before our eyes at the present 
time than this attempt at reconstruction. The cause 
of education all over the world has received a great 
impulse through the fact that French statesmen have 
chosen to mate free schools and compulsory attend- 
ance the corner-stone of the new state. The doctrine 
that universal education in schools makes a people 
strong and free, could be regarded as visionary by par- 
tisans of the old regime ; but when the statesmen of 
France proclaim that it was the schools of Germany 
that conquered at Sedan — when they proceed to organ- 
ize a thorough and universal system of schools — when 
England reforms on a new basis her own educational 
system, and when Italy and Spain manifest equal 
energy in founding an efficient system of popular edu- 
cation, no room for doubt is left in the mind of the 
conservative as to the practical necessity of education 
to national prosperity. It is not the doctrinaire^ but 
the statesman and public opinion, that assert it. 

The first question being settled, that of the indis- 
pensableness of schools for the people, there arises into 
prominence the second and more subtle question, 
What shall be the course of study in these people's 
schools? Here come in the conflicting claims of 
2 



vi editor's preface. 

BcieBce and literature. Tlie dazzling victories of 
science and invention in the conquest of Nature 
furnish the argument in behalf of science: The cen- 
tral branch of study in the people's schools should be 
natural science. On the other hand, tradition has 
made letters and literary study the chief instrument 
of education in the school. Much more than one half 
of the work in the school is devoted to the study of 
language. The humanists defend the traditional course 
of study, but the realists demand more science. This 
is the contest now going on everywhere within Chris- 
tian countries. 

In language-study it is not one's native tongue 
that has formed the center of instruction, but rather 
the classic tongues, Latin and Greek. This gives a 
further point of advantage to the advocates of natural 
science, who are not slow to urge the uselessness of 
devoting so much time to " dead " languages. 

The influence of the realistic party has prevailed 
in England and on the Continent to induce experiments 
in the line of scientific study. But a reaction has set 
in, and the present book of M. Fouillee represents the 
most advanced thought on the side of the humanists. 

It is not contended that natural science should be 
excluded from the course of study, but only that it 
should be subordinated to language-study. Science 
will undoubtedly occupy a large place in the pro- 
gramme of the school of the future, but it will never 
form the central interest of the school. This is the 
conclusion, according to science itself, rightly inter- 
preted by M. Guyau and M. Fouillee. It is shown by 
them that the foremost doctrine of natural science — 
that of evolution — demands for education as its central 
theme the study of the spiritual evolution of civiliza- 
tion. This is the reason why the youth of all Euro- 
pean countries, and of all countries that share in 
European civilization, are trained by the study of the 
two '^ dead " languages, Latin and Greek. It is be- 



Vll 

cause " the evolution of the civilization in which we 
live and move and have our being issued through 
Greece and Eome on its way to us. We kindled the 
torches of our institutions — the watch-tires of our 
civilization — at their sacred flames. The organism 
of the state, the invention of the forms in which man 
may live in a civil community and enjoy municipal 
and personal rights — these trace their ' descent in a 
direct line from Eome, and were indigenous to the 
people that spoke Latin. In our civil and political 
forms we live Eoman life to-day. That side or phase 
of the complex organism of modern civilization is 
Eoman. Our scientific and aesthetic forms come from 
beyond Eome ; they speak the language of their Greek 
home to this very day, just as much as jurisprudence 
and legislation pronounce their edicts in Eoman words. 
Eeligion points through Greece and Eome to a beyond 
in Judea for a still deeper spiritual presupposition." * 

There are two strands of our civilization that wo 
live unconsciously; we inherit our civilization as a 
life of habit and custom. If we are to become en- 
lightened, and understand this life of use and won't; if 
we are to become conscious of the grounds of the in- 
stinctive springs and blind impulses, and elevate them 
into reason, we must follow the traditional course of 
study prescribed for a " liberal " education. We must 
approach the Eoman and Athenian life, and put on 
its spiritual clothing. A language is a sort of spiritual 
clothing. 

Using the language of evolution, we must become 
acquainted with our spiritual embryology. Modern 
languages do not suffice for this purpose, for all mod- 
ern languages borrowed their two strands of culture 
ideas from the Greeks and Eomans. " To suggest a 
study of German or French as a substitute for Latin 

* Quoted from my Report of the St. Louis Public Schools for 
1872-'73, p. 69. 



viii editor's preface. 

and Greek, would be paralleled in the science of zool- 
ogy by suggesting a study of snakes instead of tadpoles 
in the embryology of the frog." * 

This is the "national point of view " of which M. 
Fouillee speaks. Those nations whose civilization is 
derivative must learn to understand themselves by 
studying the language of the original source of their 
civilization. The Chinese must (and they do) study 
Confucius ; the Hindoos study Sanskrit ; the Moham- 
medans the Koran. 

Doubtless each nation has other important ele- 
ments in its national idea which render it necessary 
to give a particular bent to the course of study in its 
schools. France, for instance, must sustain its unique 
position in the world as arbiter of artistic taste and 
fashion by special studies in classic art. 

The reader of the writings of M. Fouillee and M. 
Guyau will be struck with their grasp of the psy- 
chology of Herbart. The fundamental thought of 
idees forces is Herbartian. The use of " hypnotic 
suggestion " in the explanation of model education, 
and the well-sustained attack on the scientific course 
of study as not furnishing mental stimulant for per- 
manent growth in intellect, are based on the Herbart- 
ian psychology. It is not what we perceive, but what 
we assimilate or apperceive, that nourishes the mind. 
Natural science furnishes at the outset a limited stock 
of new conceptions, and when these are exhausted no 
further growth of the intellect comes from the ma- 
nipulation of the details of the science. On the con- 
trary, in literature and history and philosophy these 
open up a never-ending series of greater syntheses, 
and the mind is obliged to expand ever anew to re- 
ceive them. 

W. T. Hakeis. 

Washington, D. C, June, 1892. 

* Report for 1873-73 above cited, p. 70. 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 



It is now more than three centuries since the "up- 
rising and reinstatement of Hellenism," with its new 
conceptions of life, revolutionized the thought of 
Europe. To the change in the existing order of 
things at that time we have a parallel at the present 
moment. The last half-century has seen the triumph 
of the scientific method, and the impulse given to 
modern thought by the invasion of the positive spirit 
has produced a malaise pedagogique, which is now 
reaching an acute stage. The spirit of reform is in 
the air. The question of the retention of Greek at 
the universities is but a ripple of the great wave that 
seems ready to burst upon us and to obliterate the 
characteristic features of our national system of 
education. The pressure of a complex civilization 
has introduced new elements into the problems per- 
plexing the statesmen of the day, and has given fresh 
impetus to the impending change. A glance at the 
various forms of the educational systems obtaining in 
Europe and America is sufficient to betray to the 
observant eye how near to the verge of chaos we are 
standing. Questions of special interest are constantly 
arising, and in the excitement of the moment we are 



X TRANSLATOK'S PEEFACE. 

apt to place them in a false perspective, to exaggerate 
or to minimize their relative importance, and so we 
run the danger of ignoring or treating with indifi'er- 
ence those fundamental principles which are of 
infinitely greater importance than anything of merely 
temporary interest. The present conflict between the 
claims of a literary and of a scientific curriculum in 
our secondary schools is an instance in point. Every- 
where we see the tendency of scientific and com- 
mercial studies to thrust what is more disinterested 
into the background. Grave as were the faults of 
the old regime, an impartial and dispassionate survey 
of the results of the purely scientific system does not 
seem to warrant the perfervid encomiums of its sup- 
porters. The investigations of Mr, Glazebrook, the 
Head Master of Clifton, into the post-university career 
of science " scholars " at Oxford and Cambridge, lead 
him to conclude that there is " a very marked advan- 
tage on the side of those who had the more liberal 
education." * Similar inquiries elsewhere lead to the 
conclusion that the powers of observation, correlation, 
and inference are not as fully developed by this train- 
ing as was anticipated, and that the mere erudition so 
frequent and so fatal in the classical system is equally 
fatal and equally frequent in a scientific training. 
It looks as if the " modern " system is after all but a 
system of imparting infoi mation — " the least part of 
knowledge," as Butler tells us. This is the kernel of 
the whole matter. And, if it be true that the 
"modern" system eflfectually stifles what is more 
important than knowledge itself — the desire for know- 



♦ Thirteen Essays on Education (" The Universities and Specialization," 
p. 231). 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. XI 

ledofe — the indictment is a serious one. The result of 
this feeling is that, abroad, at any rate — for in this 
country we move slowly — there is felt the discomfort 
that, as Locke says, underlies every desire for change, 
France, Germany, and Italy are convulsed by the 
shock of the two opposing forces of Humanism and 
Realism, In this country we seem quite content 
with having supplemented the " classical side " by a 
" modern side," and we cheerfully throw the onus of 
choice between these alternatives upon the parents — 
who in most cases are the least competent to make 
that choice wisely. But abroad, the State has 
organized the secondary education of the whole com- 
munity, and the theoretical and practical difficulties 
of an exceedingly complex problem have been forced 
upon the attention of statesmen who, with or without 
the necessary qualifications, have had to attempt at 
least a provisional solution. At home the voice of 
Matthew Arnold has been crying to us from the 
wilderness : Organize, organize your secondary edu- 
cation! Your middle-class education must be a 
public service with the organization and guaran- 
tees of a public service, with the honest, single- 
minded, logically pursued aim of efficiency. But our 
Cassandra was ignored. Alone of the great European 
powers we leave our secondary education to the 
energy and enterprise of the individual. We have 
no definite centre of responsibility. Our efforts are 
spasmodic and ill-directed. We have devised a scheme 
of technical instruction which can effect but little 
until our system of primary instruction is reformed 
and extended, for the former is intended to aid the 
masses whose minds have been lying fallow from the 
age of twelve or thirteen. The University Extension 



xii TEANSLATOR'S PEEFACE. 

scheme has failed to touch the masses for the same 
reason; it brought "caviare" to "the general" by 
means of a picked body of men who, as a rule, are too 
inexperienced and unsympathetic to be able to make 
the untimely food palatable. Not attempts such as 
these, not people's palaces, polytechnics, and the host 
of forms which philanthropic endeavour has assumed 
in our large towns, are the crying need of the hour, 
but a sound organization of our secondary education. 
The longer our recognition of this is postponed the 
more difficult and costly will action become. When 
we do recognize it, our statesmen will have to discuss 
in sober earnest the question which is being fiercely 
debated at the present moment by the statesmen, 
savants, and litterateurs of Europe — What is the 
proper basis of a secondary education ? 

The rivalry between the gymnasiuTii and realschule 
has its counterpart in France in the conflict between 
the classical lycees and the ecoles speciales. The 
struggle has been intensified in the latter country by 
the descent into the arena of a third group of com- 
batants, advocating what is not a compromise but 
a rival scheme, under the name of enseignement das- 
sique frangais. The parties engaged in this triangular 
duel are by no means agreed, even when they profess 
to be directing their efforts to the same end. Some 
vigorously condemn any form of education that is not 
based upon both Greek and Latin. Others, to the 
gratification of the clergy, pronounce boldly in favour 
of a radical change, which must in the long run in- 
volve the relegation of both Greek and Latin to the 
ecoles libres. M. Bigot, for example, insists on much 
the same bifurcation as that obtaining in Germany, 
viz. an enseignement classique of Greek and Latin or 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. Xlll 

of Latin alone. So far, all indignantly denounce the 
technical or professional side proposed for the secondary 
schools.* M. Dietz would make " modern humanities " 
the basis of all secondary education.f Most daring of 
all is M. Raoul Frary,| and he is the more formidable 
because, a scholar of exceptional brilliancy, he fights 
with weapons forged in the armoury of his opponents. 
Nothing will content M. Frary but the suppression of 
Latin and Greek. Delenda est Carthago ! Such are 
a few instances of the ideas afloat in France at the 
present moment. But these, on the whole, treat the 
subject far too much from the utilitarian point of 
view. Looking at the question of education from a 
wider standpoint, the late M. Guyau has joined in the 
discussion with a contribution which, from the very 
nature of its conception, has given a higher tone to 
controversy.§ The present volume is so closely linked 
with that of M. Guyau, both in object and method, 
that in attempting to give the reader an idea of the 
part played in the discussion by M. Fouillee, it will 
perhaps be advisable to state the Hcope of the work 
of the younger philosopher. 

In all that Guyau wrote he kept one single end in 
view, " the linking together of ethics, sesthetics, and 
religion with the idea of life — life in its most intensive, 
extensive, and therefore most fruitful form." To him 
pedagogy is '' the art of adapting new generations to 
those conditions of life which are the most intensive ex- 



* " Questions d'enseignement secondaire " (1886). 

t " Etudes Classiques sans Latin " (1886). " Les Humauit^s Modernes " 
(1887). 

X " Question du Latin " (1886). 

§ " Education and Heredity. A sociological study." Contemporary 
Science Series. 1891. (Walter Scott.) 



xiv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

tensive, and fruitful for the individual and the species." 
The claims of the individual and of society are com- 
plementary, each is necessary to the fullest develop- 
ment of the other. The object of all education is 
simultaneously individual and social, it is "the search 
for. means to bring the most intensive individual 
existence into harmony v^ith the most extensive 
social life." It therefore has a triple end: (1) "The 
harmonious development in the individual of all 
the capacities proper and useful to the race ; " (2) " The 
development in the individual of such capacities as 
are peculiar to him," as long as such development 
" will not disturb the equilibrium of the organism ; " 
(3) " To arrest and check the tendencies and instincts 
which may disturb that equilibrium, i.e. to aid heredity 
in proportion as it tends to create permanent supe- 
riority in the race, and to resist its influence when it 
tends to accumulate causes pernicious to the race itself" 
The freshness and ingenuity of Guyau's treatment of 
the problem in this form can be readily imagined by 
those who are familiar with his works on other 
subjects. An ardent evolutionist, he carries his 
doctrine to its logical consequences. "The whole 
system of education must be directed towards the 
maintenance and progress of the human race." 
" Every individual is a temporary depository of part 
of the force inherent in the race;" and Guyau's 
special claim to attention lies in his endeavour to 
show that the system of education best adapted to 
conserve the force of the race is also the best adapted 
to conserve the force stored up in the individual. 
The heads of the argument may be roughly stated as 
follows. The individual is a society composed of con- 
stituent cells ; hence " life" and "social life" are contro- 



TKANSLATOK'S PREFACE. XV 

vertible terms. The maintenance of the solidarity 
between the individual and the race is the only hope 
for the future of both. The education best adapted 
to secure the maintenance of this solidarity, upon 
which the persistence of the race depends, is that 
based upon the Humanities. The modern system, 
based upon science, is sterile, because it neglects the 
humanities contained in science, and science is only 
valuable from the humanities contained in it. 

So far are we led in M. Guj^au's posthumous work. 
In M. Fouiliee's opening chapters we find a brilliant 
application by analogy of the doctrine of selection to 
physical, intellectual, and moral education — an appli- 
cation as novel, ingenious, and stimulating as the 
analogical application by Guyau of the principle of 
"rotation of crops" in agriculture to intellectual 
education.* Particularizing from the race to the 
nation, M. Fouillee treats the subject of secondary 
education from the national standpoint. But although 
he has narrowed down Guyau's main thesis, t^e 
author does not present us with a mere supplement 
to "Education and Heredity,'* An experienced 
teacher, and one of the leading philosophers in France, 
his opinions on the burning question of the hour 
acquire additional weight at the present crisis. His 
eloquent exposition of the humanities contained in 
science,! his crushing indictment of the utilitarian 
tendency that confounds education with instruction, 
his damaging criticism of the educational doctrines of 
Mr. Herbert Spencer and Professor Bain,t his able 

* " Education and Heredity," c. viii. 

t It was once said of Professor Tyndall's lecture on "The Scientific Use 
of the Imagination," that it was really a lecture on "the imaginative 
use of science." What was meant as a quip had a mine of truth in it. 

X The student should read in this connection M. Thamin's excellent 
monograph, " Education et Positivisme " (1892). 



XVI TKANSLATOR'S PBEFACE. 

and temperate exposure of the fallacies that have 
found utterance during the present controversy, his 
luminous and convincing restatement of the arguments 
for the retention of the humanities as the basis of 
any system of secondary education, his grasp of detail 
as shown in the tables throughout the volume, and 
finally, the fact that the recent changes in the 
curriculum of the secondary schools in Italy have 
been on the lines laid down in this volume by M. 
Fouillee, may well give us pause.* 

I must express my deep sense of the courtesy and 
generosity of M, Fouillee, who gave me carte-hlanche 
to retrench the French edition where necessary, and 
to adapt it for the English and American reader. 
After due consideration I decided to omit just so 
much of the detail as would be irrelevant to the 
reader in this country or America, and also whatever 
would necessitate voluminous elucidation in footnotes. 
The main argument remains intact. The reader 
should bear in mind that the haccalaureat corresponds 
to the degree examinations at the British universities 
rather than to their matriculations. Wherever time- 
tables are given, I have added the average age of the 
classes for w^hich they are intended. M. Fouillee's 
tables can therefore be readily applied to boys of the 
same average age elsewhere. I have taken the 
liberty of inserting a few references that may be 
useful to the student of pedagogy. 

W. J. GREENSTREET. 

The Makijng School, Stroud, 
March, 1892. 

* The Italian government has practically adopted the compromise 
suggested by M. Fouillee between the conflicting claims of the classics 
and natural science, and has reorganized and co-ordinated the subjects 
taught in its secondary schools. 



CONTENTS, 



TAOR 

Introduction ... ... ... ... ,„ „. i 



BOOK 1. 

EDUCATION AND SELECTION FKOM THE NATIONAL 
POINT OF VIEW 10 

CHAPTER L 

Power of Education and of Idea-foeces— Suggestions- 
Heredity ... ... ... ... ... ,.. 10 

CHAPTER IL 

Physical Education from the Point of View of Evolution 

AND Selection ... ... ... ... ... 28 



CHAPTER IIL 

The Objects of Intellectual and Moral Education from 

THE National Standpoint... ... ... ... 33 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Selection of Superiorities — Rational Means Available 4] 



XVIU CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

CHAPTER Y. 

Utilitarian Education and True National Interests ... 4'5 



BOOK 11. 

SCIENTIFIC HUMANITIES FROM THE NATIONAL 

STANDPOINT 54 



CHAPTER I. 
The Humanities and their General Object ... cc. 54 

CHAPTER II. 
Faults in our Teaching of Science ... ,., ... 59 

CHAPTER III. 

The Philosophical Reform of Scientific Studies — Their 

Transformation into Humanities ... ... ... 71 



BOOK III. 

THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES FROM THE NATIONAL 

STANDPOINT 94 

CHAPTER L 

Of the Parallel between Human Evolution and Individual 

Evolution ... ... ... ... ... ... 96 

CHAPTER IL 

Great National Interests and the Classical Humanities 105 



CONTENTS. xix 

PAQB 

BOOK IV. 

A. "MODERN" EDUCATION FROM THE NATIONAL 

STANDPOINT 136 

CHAPTER I. 
Unity in Secondary Education ... ... ... ,..139 

CHAPTER II. 
Modern Languages and Litekatuke ... ... ... 153 

CHAPTER in. 

Fkench ''Special" Insteuction, and the German Real- 

scHULE ... ... ... ... ... ... 17-4 

CHAPTER IV. 
Proposed Refokm? ... ... ... ••• ... 181 



BOOK V. 

PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, AND SOCIAL SCIENCE FROM 

THE NATIONAL STANDPOINT 193 

CHAPTER L 

Moral and Social Science in the School the only Solution 

of the Problem ... ... ... ••* ... 195 

CHAPTER IL 
Moral and Civic Instruction ... ... ... ... 204 

CHAPTER III. 
Historical and Political Instruotion ... ... ... 21S 



XX 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

LlTEKATURE AND AESTHETICS 



... 226 



CHAPTER V. 

Instruction in Philosophy 



... 246 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Necessity of Philosophy to the Teacher 



... 256 



CHAPTER VII. 

EXAUIINATIONS AT THE EnD OF SCHOOL-LIFE — AbITURIENTEN- 

EXAMEN ... ... ... .•• ... ••• 261 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Philosophy, and its Place in Higher Education ... 



e.. 264 



CHAPTER IX. 



Conclusion 

Appendix I. 
Appendix II. 
Appendix III. 
Index ... 



... 268 

... 293 

... 316 

... 323 

... 329 



EDUCATION 
FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



INTEODUCTION. 

A SOCIETY has been formed in France for the promotion of 
a physical renaissance; it is a matter of general opinion 
that combination is no less necessary for the promotion of 
an intellectual and moral renaissance. Educational ques- 
tions are the order of the day ; rarely have so many books 
been published with reference to problems in pedagogy. Most 
of the controversies relative to this vital question of educa- 
tion seem to me to arise from the fact that we fail to reach 
a sufficiently general point of view, i.e. the national, inter- 
national, or efven ethnical. Among books recently published 
and deserving of notice on various grounds, there is, I may 
almost say, only one in which the author places side by side 
the two essential factors in this problem — the individual 
and the race.* On this, as on all great questions of 
practical philosophy, Guyau has left his mark. His prin- 
cipal claim on our attention will be that he has treated from 
the " sociological " point of view the problems, not only of 

* "Education and Heredity :" Contemporary Science Series. 



2 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

morals, but also of religion, sesthetics, and education. He 
has treated the question from the highest standpoint, and has 
stated it in a strictly scientific form : " Given the hereditary 
merits and faults of a race, how far can we modify existing 
heredity by means of education for the benefit of a new 
heredity ? " For the problem is nothing less than this ; it 
is not merely a matter of the instruction of individuals, but 
of the preservation and improvement of the race. Educa- 
tion must therefore be based upon the physiological and 
moral laws of the culture of races. These laws are not con- 
sidered unworthy of attention when we are dealing with the 
breeding of animals; but they are set aside or forgotten 
when we are dealing with man, "as if the education of 
humanity only concerned individuals." The ethnical is the 
true point of view. By means of education we must create 
such hereditary tendencies as will be useful to the race, both 
physically and intellectually. True education is that which, 
instead of sterilizing the brain by the exhaustion of its 
force, makes it more and more fruitful by the development 
of varied capacities in the midst of varied environments. 

In the following pages I propose to take a more restricted 
view of the problem than that taken by Guyau ; I shall 
devote myself in particular to educational questions, which 
I shall discuss from the national point of view. The 
nation is an organism endowed with a kind of collective 
consciousness, although not concentrated in an ego ; I there- 
fore take everything that maintains in a nation continuity 
of character, mind, habits, and aptitudes — in a word, a 
national consciousness and a national will — as a form of 
organic heredity and identity persisting from age to age. 
That strange saying of old Heraclitus has been rightly applied 
to the solidarity of the generations of mankind : " The death 
of the gods is our life ; " i.e., according to ancient modes of 
speech, we are living on our ancestors, on the moral forces 
incarnated in the history of our country, as well as on the 
natural forces incorporated in its chmate and in its soil. In 
my opinion, the final goal of education is to secure, not only 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

the development of the race, but also that of our nation- 
ality, our native country. 

Among the means of attaining this end which we have to 
consider, the first is selection. The history of humanity 
exhibits the struggle of races, nationalities, and individuals, 
not only for existence — in the oft-quoted phraseology of a 
narrow interpretation of Darwinism — but also for vital 
progress of every kind, including intellectual, aesthetic, and 
moral life. Much is said in these days about the struggle 
for existence. There is a hasty and heedless application to 
humanity of the laws formulated by Darwin for the animal 
kingdom. The metamorphoses of selection, as it passes 
from the domain of brute force to that of intellectual and 
moral force, are ignored. All the more or less shocking 
deductions drawn from Darwinism are due to this logical 
blunder, and consist in the belief that the triumph of the 
most powerful force is always equivalent to that of the most 
brutal force. It is of importance, therefore, to note the 
analogies and differences between natural and social selec- 
tion ; these I shall attempt to point out. In the first 
place, we must endeavour to ascertain the true power and 
limits of education and of instruction, strictly so called ; 
we shall investigate how far it is true that " ideas lead the 
world," and how a selection of ideas is primarily affected in 
the brain by education, i.e. what we may call psychological 
selection. Then we shall discuss social selection and the 
conditions under which it will produce such a picked class 
as is necessary to the progress of the whole race. Here the 
doctrine of evolution will assist us to determine the most 
essential objects of that education which has as its aim the 
perfection of the species. 

Having thus laid down our general principles, we shall 
draw our theoretical and practical inferences as far as 
reform of the educational systems of Europe is concerned. 
The more civilization advances, the more pre-eminence lies 
with everything that is organized, systematized, and co- 
ordinated in hierarchic order. From the military point of 



4 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

view, for instance, the more numerous the army, the more 
essential is the unity and subordination of those parts 
which are distinctive of a Hving being. From the poUtical 
point of view, it is equally clear that organization is of 
vast, and so to speak of vital, importance. The danger 
that, above all others, a democratic nation must avoid is the 
disintegration of society into units with no immediate 
concern but self-interest, into individuals to whom social 
duties and bonds are gradually ceasing to appeal. Is not 
the same danger to be anticipated in education ? There, as 
elsewhere, we must battle all the more vigorously agamst 
anarchy and want of organization, in proportion as the 
number of subjects of knowledge becomes more numerous 
and more complex ; science and industry are advancing 
with such rapid strides that the human brain cannot, save 
by more and more rigorous discipline, adapt itself to such a 
variety of laws, theories, and applications. That nation 
which can introduce into its education the most powerful 
and the most consolidated organization will, ipso facto, 
enjoy in the world of intellect a superiority analogous to 
that of well-organized governments and armies. 

Eeform has, so far, been chiefly confined either to the 
subjects taught or to the methods employed in teaching the 
various literary and scientific subjects ; no attempt has been 
made to harmonize and unify education as a whole ; in 
fact, the systems at present obtaining in Europe do not 
seem to have found their true centre of gravity. Some 
want the basis of education to be scientific, others literary ; 
the latter, again, may be subdivided into the partisans of 
ancient and of modern languages. In this volume we shall 
inquire if the link between science and literature is not to 
be found in the knowledge of man, of society, and of the 
great laws of the universe, i.e. in morals, social science, and 
£esthetics — in a word, in philosophy. 

This idea is becoming more and more familiar ; of this 
the recent reforms in education in Italy are a fresh proof. 
It has already been suggested in France that instead of 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

being relegated to the last year of school life, the course of 
ethics, logic, {esthetics, and general philosophy should be 
introduced, in their more elementary form, as early as the 
ages of fourteen to sixteen. This new system has just been 
inaugurated in Italy ; psychology, logic, ethics, and general 
philosophy are taught in the three highest classes of the 
lyceums. In France, too, a proposal has been made to 
include in the teaching of each of the special sciences — 
physics, physiology, history, etc.— the study of their philo- 
sophical principles and general conclusions. The new 
ItaUan code gives a place, principally in natural science, to 
general and philosophical questions. This is, then, a first 
attempt in the direction of a philosophical organization and 
co-ordination of subjects. But as the code was drawn up 
in an exclusively positivist spirit, certain principles, which 
to my mind are essential, have been unwisely sacrificed. 

Of one thing, however, we may feel convinced — that a 
new group of sciences, i,e. social science, is extending its 
limits, and by the next century will have been awarded the 
first rank in importance. Too exclusively literary an educa- 
tion having provoked a reaction in favour of science, and 
scientific education in its tmii having disappointed expecta- 
tions, we may fairly prophesy that, in the more or less near 
future, the characteristic feature of education will be the 
moral and social tendency given from the outset to all sub- 
jects and to all methods ; this will ipso facto be system atiza- 
tion instead of the present vicious condition of aff'airs, Avhich 
is generally known by the barbarous names of " particulariz- 
ing," or "specializing." The "humanities," in the true 
sense of the word, which should be based upon the know- 
ledge of man and human societies, will then be brouo-hfe 
to the front. The humanities, with the philosophy which 
completes them, form the true and the only liberal education. 
In each of us must be " a free m.an," who keeps his freedom 
unimpaired by the ever-increasing servitude of life, able to 
communicate to industry itself, and to material labour of 
every kind, something of that " dignity " wliich, according 



6 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

to Plato and Aristotle, " comes with knowledge and thouglit." 
We must each of us feel that we are citizens ; we must be 
animated by public spirit, always ready to place the interests 
of our country above those of self, above our own work and 
industry, above our business and our wealth. To obtain 
this twofold result, a liberal education was always considered 
a sine qua no?i, and it was supposed that for the dominant 
class it should be as extended in character as possible. I 
shall endeavour to determine accurately the necessary bases 
of such an education, truly humane and at the same time 
national ; for that purpose I shall discuss the problem not 
merely, as is usually the case, from the standpoint of vague 
and general pedagogy ; I shall transfer the question to the 
ground of present reality, into a given environment — the 
modern — and a given nation — French or English, as the case 
may be. 

A nation, like an individual, has its own instinct and 
genius. 

It has the more or less vague sense of its " mission " to 
humanity. 

If social science rejects every mystical interpretation of 
the common spirit animating a nation, it by no means re- 
jects the reflected consciousness or spontaneous divination 
possessed by every nation of the functions which has devolved 
upon it. History furnishes us with ample proofs of this ; 
the Jews were not the only people who believed, and rightly 
believed, that they were chosen to transform the world ; the 
Greeks considered their mission to be the propagation of 
the arts and sciences ; Rome claimed the dominion of the 
world — even when invaded by barbarians she still was queen : 
and finally, when deprived of her temporal power, she 
reduced the universe to spiritual servitude by the establish- 
ment of the Papacy. The English claim that their destiny 
is to rule the sea, and to found colonies in distant lands. 
Americans are fond of representing their country as a 
theatre for the trial and development of liberty in every 
form and in every direction of speculative and practical life ; 



INTRODUCTION. i 

scarcely an American can be found who has not in his mind, 
in a more or less nebulous form, this idea of illimitable 
individualism and indefinite expansion. We know the 
Germany of to-day believes in her scientific and political 
mission, just as iu the time of Luther she believed in her 
relio-ious mission. As for France, her belief in the universal 
triumph of reason, law, and fraternity is a commonplace. 
France prides herself on being, par excellence, the focus of 
those ideas and sentiments which in the true sense of the 
word are humane ; she is the country of " humanity," in 
the broad sense in which the fifteenth century understood 
the word. Her classical hterature and art form a literature 
and an art of an entirely human and universal expansion ; she 
is pre-eminently the classic land, the land of the " humani- 
ties." The first duty of every French government is to 
maintain, in the education it provides for the nation, the 
literary and artistic honour of France, and her faith in a 
profoundly human morality and philosophy. 

Above all, a great nation like France must foster the pro- 
duction and selection of the highest genius, or even of simple 
superiority. How, then, is genius born and developed ? By 
the combination of three factors : (1) The hereditary trans- 
mission of the qualities of the race, and in particular of the 
family; (2) The ''happy accidents" and peculiar circum- 
stances of spermatic or embryonic life ; (3) The influence of 
the national environment and of national education. We 
have no control over the embryo or over those chances which 
by a precious idiosyncrasy virtually create a genius ; but we 
can do something, we can even do a great deal, to prepare 
for the advent of minds of a higher order, by the accumula- 
tion of certain qualities in the race, and by the maintenance 
of that intellectual and aesthetic environment which is, as it 
were, the vital air of genius. 

An evolutionist has justly remarked, a projws of adaptation 
to environment, that in Greece, where every god^ had his 
o^\^l temple, every temple its statue, every house its altar, 
and every altar its minor divinities; in Greece, "where 



8 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

marble was as common as brick in London," and wbere 
sculptors were as numerous as carpenters, we can understand 
how a Phidias was born and found admirers, while, on the 
other hand, he could not have been born in Germania. 
So in Italy, where from the earliest times nymphs and satyrs 
have been portrayed, succeeded in later days by Madonnas 
and St. Sebastians ; where little chapels have always been 
hung with votive offerings to Yenus Genetrix or to Our Lady 
of the Sea ; where countless generations of artists decorated 
the walls of Pompeii, or covered with rapid frescoes the 
commonest ceilings of Florence and Genoa ; need we wonder 
that a country, where a lofty level of taste and artistic 
finish was thus developed, should have produced a Leonardo 
da Yinci and a Eaphael ? * On the other hand, why has 
America produced an Edison, a Morse, a Bell, a Fulton, but 
no Schiller, Mozart, or Michael Angelo ? The reason is 
easily discovered both in the hereditary and in the existing 
national environment. Do we wish France to remain the land 
of letters, painting, disinterested scientific investigation, and 
philosophy .? We must be careful lest we reduce the classical 
elite to a few ; for then the production and selection of genius 
or simple superiority will be impossible. We want, as I 
shall show, a field of culture of sufiicient extent for the 
national mind to expand in every direction of intellectual 
work — of literature, art, and science. France must be 
literary, scientific, and artistic, if Frenchmen are to be 
literary, scientific, and artistic ; if they are to maintain 
their influence and glory as a nation. If France chooses to 
become "Americanized," she will perhaps cease to be 
France, but she will certainly never become an America. 

The classics are already the pledge of a certain dis- 
interestedness, of a certain literary taste ; even Latin, 
" apparently useless," is useful in turning the minds of the 
young from their immediate or future interests — ^personal 
interests — in carrying them back to great national and 

* Vide Grant Alien, " Idiosyncrasy " (i/mcZ, 1883, p. 500). 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

historical interests, to French literature and to the ancient 
literature by which it was inspired, to that ancient art from 
which our modern art still derives its inspiration. That is 
Gallia Ferennis, beginning with Eome or earlier still, 
instead of "commencing with the French Eevolution."* 

Democracy having already betrayed only too strong a 
tendency to utilitarianism and industrialism, the State, far 
from removing the obstacles in the path of all who have not 
gone through a full course of the " humanities," should, on 
the contrary, do its utmost to favour the selection and con- 
stitution of a really hberal elite; this is its duty and its 
right, especially in republics, in which, in the interest of all, 
this guiding influence should be in the hands of men whose 
minds are of the highest order, who are superior to the 
interests of the moment, who are least affected by purely 
utilitarian tendencies, and most capable of perpetuating from 
generation to generation that historical and permanent 
national spirit which constitutes the true " national will." 

* An allusion to the fanaticism which advocates that school text-books 
of French history should begin with the French Kevolution. Vide 
<}uyau's " Education an I Heredity," p. 227 (Tr.). 



BOOK 1. 

EDUCATION AND SELECTION FROM THE 
NATIONAL POINT OF VIEW. 



CHAPTER I. 

POWER OF EDUCATION' AND OF IDEA-FORCES— SUGGES- 
TIONS— HEREDITY. 

The power of instruction and education, denied by some 
and exaggerated by others, being nothing but the power of 
ideas and sentiments, it is impossible to be too exact in 
determining at the outset the extent and limits of this 
force. This psychological problem is the foundation of 
pedagogy. 

I. The principle I assume at the outset is one that I have 
developed elsewhere,* that every idea tends to act itself 
out. If it is an isolated idea, or if it is not counter- 
balanced by a stronger force, its realization must take place. 
Thus the principle of the struggle for existence and of 
selection, taking the latter word in its broadest sense, is in 
my opinion as applicable to ideas as to individuals and 
living species ; a selection takes place in the brain to the 
advantage of the strongest and most exclusive idea, which 
is thus able to control the whole organism. In particular, 

* "Evolutionisrae des idees-forces." 



POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FOECES. 11 

the child's brain is an arena of conflict for ideas and tlie 
impnises they inckide ; in the brain a new idea is a new 
force which encounters the ideas already installed, and the 
impulses already developed therein. Hence I maintain that 
education as a whole is a work of intellectual selection. I 
have elsewhere stated the principal facts that demonstrate 
the impeUing force of ideas. Assume a mind, as yet a 
blank, and suddenly introduce into it the representation of 
any movement, the idea of any action — such as raising the 
arm. This idea being isolated and unopposed, the wave of 
disturbance arising in the brain wdll take the direction 
of the arm, because the nerves terminating in the arm are 
disturbed by the representation of the arm. The arm will 
therefore be lifted. Before a movement begins, we must 
think of this ; now no movement that has taken place is 
lost ; it is necessarily communicated from the brain to the 
organs if unchecked by any other representation or impulse. 
The transmission of the idea to the limbs is inevitable as 
long as the idea is isolated or unopposed. This I have 
called the law of idea-forces,* and I think I have satis- 
factorily explained the curious facts in connection with the 
impulsive actions of the idea, f The well-known experi- 
ments of Chevreul on the " pendule explorateur," and on the 
divining rod, show that if we represent to ourselves a move- 
ment in a certain direction, the hand will finally execute 
this movement without our consciousness, and so transmit 
it to the instrument. Table-turning is the realization of 
the expected movement by means of the unconscious motion 
of the hands. Thought-reading is the interpretation of 
imperceptible movements, in which the thought of the 
subject betrays itself, even without his being conscious of 
it. In the process that goes on when we are fascinated or 
are on the point of fainting, a process more obvious in 
children than in adults, there is an inchoate movement which 
the paralysis of the will fails to check. When I was a lad, 

* " Evolutionisme des idees-forces," bk. iii. f Ibid. bk. iii. 



12 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

I was once running over a plank across the weir of a 
river, it never entering my head that I ran any risk of 
faUing ; suddenly this idea came into play like a force 
obliquely compounded Avith the straight course of thought 
which had up to that moment been guiding my footsteps. I 
felt as if an invisible arm had seized me and was dragging 
me down. I shrieked and stood trembling above the foaming 
water until assistance came. Here the mere idea of vertigo 
produced vertigo. A plank on the ground may be crossed 
without arousing any idea of falling ; but if it is above 
a precipice, and we think of the distance below, the impulse 
to fall is very strong. Even when we are in perfect safety 
we may feel what is known as the " fascination " of a 
precipice.* The sight of the gulf below, becoming a fixed 
idea, produces a resultant inhibition on all other ideas. 
Temptation, which is always besetting a child because 
everything is new to it, is nothing but the power of an idea 
and its motor impulse. 

The power of an idea is the greater the more prominently 
it is singled out from the general content of consciousness. 
This selection of an idea, which becomes so exclusive that 
the whole consciousness is absorbed in it, is called mono'ideism. 
This state is precisely that of a person who has been 
hypnotised, f What is called hypnotic suggestion is nothing 
but the artificial selection of one idea to the exclusion of 
all others, so that it passes into action. Natural somnam- 
bulism similarly exhibits the force of ideas ; whatever idea 
is conceived by the somnambulist, he carries into action. 
The kind of dream in which children often live is not 
without analogy to somnambulism. The fixed idea is 
another instance of the same phenomenon, which is produced 
in the waking state, and which, when exaggerated, becomes 
monomania, a kind of morbid monoideism ; children, 
having very few ideas, would very soon acquire fixed ideas, 

* Bain, "Mental Science," p. 91 (2>.). 

t " Evolutionisme des idees-forces," bk. iv. Vido Gnyau, " Education 
and Heredity " (Walter Scott), pp. 14, 23 (Jr.). 



POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 13 

if it were not for the mobility of attention which the 
ceaseless variation of the surrounding world produces in 
them. Thus all the facts grouped nowadays under the 
name of auto-suggestion may, in my opinion, be explained. 
Here we shall generalize the law in this form : every idea 
conceived by the mind is an auto-suggestion, the selective 
effect of which is only counterbalanced by other ideas pro- 
ducing a different auto-suggestion. This is especially 
noticeable in the young, who so rapidly carry into action 
what is passing through their minds. 

The force of example, which plays so important a part in 
education, is likewise reducible to the communicative and 
selective force of every representation. In fact, we explain 
in the same way the second form of suggestion, that in 
which an act is suggested not to one's self, but to others by 
means of an idea. Perhaps the most interesting part of 
Guyau's researches is his exhaustive treatment of suggestion 
and its role in education.* Guyau was, I believe, the first 
to point out the close analogy between suggestion and 
instinct, with the possible application of suggestion to moral 
therapeutics, " as a corrective of abnormal instincts, or as a 
stimulant of normal instincts which are too weak." " Every 
suggestion is a nascent instinct wholly created by the 
hypnotiser." f Since these words were written, the thera- 
peutic results of suggestion have been numerous and 
important. By suggestion, Doctors Yoisin and Liegeois 
have cured melancholia, dipsomania, morphinism, drunken- 
ness, and excessive indulgence in tobacco. M. Belboeuf 
asserts that he has made a timid girl brave. M. Yoisin 
transformed the character of a woman who was idle and 
dishonest ; he also claims to have changed a married woman^ 
who had made domestic life unbearable to her husband, 
into a gentle and affectionate wife. This would have been 
a boon to Socrates, for instance. Finally, M. Liebault, of 

* Vide " Education and Heredity," pp. 23, et seq. (^Tr.) 
t Ibid. p. 5 (T/-.) 



14: EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

Nancy, cured a lad of incorrigible idleness for six months.* 
It is needless to say that Guyau does not advise, and even 
expressly condemns, any introduction of hypnotism into 
normal education ; it is far better, as he says, " to leave the 
boy in idleness than to make him a neuropath." His 
object in quoting pathological facts is merely for the 
purpose of deduction as to the normal state. In Guyau's 
opinion, hypnotic suggestion is nothing but the morbid 
exaggeration and artificial intensification of suggestive 
phenomena produced in a state of perfect health. 

Normal suggestion, which is the only suggestion that 
should be used in education, is psychological, moral, and 
social ; it consists in the transmission from one individual 
to another of ideas or impelling sentiments, and in the 
possibility of rendering these ideas or sentiments permanent. 
We are not, in the normal state, controlled by a particular 
magnetiser, but it by no means follows that we are nob 
*' accessible to a multitude of small suggestions, at one time 
at variance, at another accumulating and producing a very 
sensible mean eifect." Children, in particular, are open to 
every suggestion of the environment. Guyau shows that, 
from the moment it enters into the world, the child's con- 
dition may be compared to that of a hypnotized subject. 
There is the same absence of any ideas of its own, or the 
same dominance of a single idea. " Everything that the 
child sees or feels will be a suggestion ; this suggestion 
will give rise to a habit the effect of which will sometimes 
persist throughout the whole of life, just as impressions of 
terror excited in children by nurses may persist." If the 
introduction of new sentiments is possible by wholly 
pihysiological means, it should be equally possible by moral 
psychological means. Hence the importance of the fact 
that " recent studies in the nervous system seem likely to 
correct scientific prejudices against the power of education 
as science becomes more perfect." Suggestion, which 

* <' Education and Heredity/' pp. 9, 10 (Tr.). 



POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 15 

creates artificial instincts capable of counterpoising hereditary 
instincts, constitutes a new power comparable to heredity ; 
now education, as Guyau says, " is a totality of co-ordinated 
and reasoned suggestions, and we can therefore understand 
the importance and efficacy it may acquire from the 
physiological and psychological point of view." * 

In my opinion, suggestion is only a particular case of the 
most fundamental law of idea-forces, the law which dominates 
all pedagogic science, and to which the author of " Education 
and Heredity " has made in several chapters of that work 
a very important contribution. 

Ideas are sometimes considered of little consequence, and 
are supposed to have scarcely any influence upon the con- 
duct. On the other hand, the philosophers of the seven- 
teenth century, with Descartes and Pascal, considered, 
sentiments and passions as indistinct thoughts, as "thoughts, 
as it were, in process of precipitation." This is true. 
Beneath, all our sentiments lies a totality of imperfectly 
analyzed ideas, a swelling stream of crowded and indistinct 
reasons by the momentum of which we are carried away 
and swept along. Inversely, sentiments underlie all our 
ideas ; they smoulder in the dying embers of abstractions. 
Even language has a power because it arouses all the 
sentiments which it condenses in a formula ; the mere 
names " honour " and " duty " arouse infinite echoes in the 
consciousness. At the name of " honour " alone, a legion of 
images is on the point of surging up ; vaguely, as with eyes 
open in the dark, we see all the possible witnesses of our 
acts, from father and mother to friends and fellow-country- 
men ; further, if our imagination is vivid enough, we can 
see those great ancestors who did not hesitate under similar 
circumstances. " We must ; forward ! " We feel that we 
are enrolled in an army of gallant men ; the whole race, in 
its most heroic representatives, is urging us on. There is 
a social and even an historical element beneath moral ideas. 

* Vide " Education and Heredity," p. xxiv. 



16 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

Besides, language, a social product, is also a social force. 
The pious mind goes further still ; duty is personified as a 
being — the living Good whose voice we hear. 

Some speak of lifeless formulas ; of these there are very- 
few. A word, an idea, is a formula of possible action and 
of sentiments ready to pass into acts ; they are " verbs." 
Now, everj sentiment, every impulse which becomes formu- 
lated with, as it were, a fiat, acquires by this alone a new and 
quasi-creative force ; it is not merely rendered visible by its 
own light to itself, but it is defined, specified, and selected 
from the rest, and ipso facto directed in its course. That is 
why formulas relative to action are so powerful for good or 
evil ; a child feels a vague temptation, a tendency for which 
it cannot account. Pronounce in its hearing the formula, 
change the blind impulse into the luminous idea, and this 
will be a new suggestion which may, perhaps, cause it to 
fall in the direction to which it was already inclined.* On 
the other hand, some formulas of generous sentiments will 
carry away a vast audience immediately they are uttered. 
The genius is often the man who translates the aspirations 
of his age into ideas ; at the sound of his voice a 
whole nation is moved. Great moral, religious, and social 
revolutions ensue when the sentiments, long restrained and 
scarcely conscious of their own existence, become formulated 
into ideas and words ; the way is then opened, the means 
and the goal are visible alike, selection takes place, all the 
vohtions are simultaneously guided in the same direction, 
like a torrent which has found the weakest point in the dam. 

Conduct, therefore, depends in a great measure on the 
circle of ideas formed by each individual under the influence 
of experience, social relations, or of his intellectual and 
aesthetic culture. Every man eventually possesses a totality 
of general notions and maxims which become the source of 
his resolutions and actions, because the whole is blended 



* Guyau gives numerous interesting examples of this. Vide Ibid. pp. 
19, e<s(?g. (2V.) 



POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 17 

into a sentiment and into a habit. Even in children the 
tendency to maximation is manifest, becansc a maxim is a 
generah'zation which satisfies the thonght.* If, then, there 
is a break in the circle of ideas at any important point, if 
into that circle false notions or immoral maxims have gained 
entrance, we shall become feeble and vicious, as in the case 
of a nation whose fundamental laws are immoral. The 
various mental faculties of an individual are developed, hke 
his physical faculties, in a relation of reci^^rocal action, but 
intellectual activity is more independent than the rest. If 
you have false ideas on a point of fact or reasoning, I may 
in a few moments put your finger on your own error or 
convince you by proof ; but to modify a sentiment, tendency, 
or habit is a matter of months or years. The intellect is 
therefore more flexible, mobile, and progressive than the 
rest of our constitution ; hence w^e can act upon it the more 
readily. Give a person suffering from myopia the glasses 
wliich make objects visible to him; he is compelled to 
admit that he sees these objects. Show an ignorant person 
a drop of water under the microscope, and he will be com- 
pelled to admit that the drop of water is inhabited. The 
intellect is to the other mental faculties what the eyes are to 
the organs of our body— touch at a distance. It foUow^s 
that intellectual activity has superior power in the direction 
and transformation of other kinds of activity. As it dis- 
closes new aspects of things it produces thereby a double 
effect — it excites new sentiments, and opens new ways to 
action. Every new idea tends to become a sentiment and 
an impulse, and therefore an idea-force. The intellect is the 
great instrument of voluntary selection. It is an abbreviated 
means of evolution, accelerating and accomplisliing in a few 
years the selections which without its aid would have taken 
centuries to effect. 

Now let us pass from the individual to the social organism. 
There again the different activities and products of civiliza- 

* Guyan, " Education and Heredity," p. 109 {Tr.). 
4 



18 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

tion are reciprocally related ; but the products of the 
intellect and science stimulate and direct all the other social 
functions. Eeligious, moral, esthetic, political, and 
economical creations are determined by the progress of 
humanity in the real knowledge of things or in the dis- 
covery of ideas. Instruction is a motor of primary im- 
portance in the social mechanism ; but subject to one 
condition — that it is brought to bear upon really directive 
and selective ideas, on those ideas which from their intricate 
connection with sentiment and volition aie happily termed 
idea-forces. 

IE. The exclusive partisans of heredity do not perceive 
that their doctrine is vitiated by a contradiction that seems 
to have escaped notice. They impress upon us that the 
fundamental law of heredity is that of regression to the 
average, and they do not see that for that very reason 
heredity tends to neutralize the effects of its own action — in 
so far as they are exceptional — in order to give place to 
agencies other than its own. 

From his ingenious statistics on heredity, Galton deduces 
an important law which he calls "regression to the average."* 
Great deviations are always exceptions, and the average type 
very soon reappears. Take at random two large groups of 
persons in ten different generations, and compare their 
stature. The average stature of the groups will be the 
same, because the child inherits not only from his parents 
but from his ancestry. Now, says Galton, there are so 
many elements of every kind blended in the ancestry of a 
given individual, that this ancestry in its totality is indis- 
tinguishable from a sample taken at haphazard from the 
general population. The average stature of his ancestors 
will become identical with that of the population. 

As the average statures of your ancestry and mine are 
identical, deviations in stature are due to chance and the 
combinations of the most intimately connected heredities; 

* " Natural Inheritance," p. 95, et seq. (Jr.). 



POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FOECES. 19 

in the great mass of the population, deviations arc 
neutralized and differences disappear. Assuming this, let 
us suppose that a particular system of physical education 
is capable of giving a very sensible increase to the stature of 
individuals subjected to this regime -, the effects of heredity 
upon the stature of an individual being minimized in the 
case of the majority at the moment of birth, it follows that 
it would be possible to increase the stature of successive 
generations by a wide distribution of this education. If the 
partisans of heredity object that — "The laws of nature 
are inevitable ; given a father and mother and a grand- 
father and grandmother of a certain stature, the calculation 
of probabilities may determine in advance the probable 
stature of the children," — we may answer — " Since your 
inevitable laws result in the triumph of the average, in the 
levelKng of exceptions, in the reduction of the height of the 
tall and its increase in the short, do not you see that these 
laws leave the field open to the action of education ? " 

Take as our starting-point an exceptional individual, and 
ascend or descend the direct or collateral line ; we shall find 
that those who are in immediate juxtaposition to him are 
still exceptional, but not so exceptional as he is ; after two or 
three steps of this kind we shall see that these exceptional 
characteristics have almost vanished, and that the sum total 
of his near family relations is not essentially different from 
that of a number of ordinary persons taken at random. 
Further, as a matter of fact, the really exceptional indi- 
viduals are the exceptional children of ordinary parents, and 
not the ordinary children of exceptional parents. This 
theory is destructive of all prejudices with regard to noble 
blood. People imagine that the " blood of the Howards " 
flows without intermixture from generation to generation, 
because of the constant emergence of the same characteristic 
qualities ; but remember that we have mothers as weh as 
fathers, and that every factor contributes almost equally to 
the result, and we shall see that the general characteristics 
of your ancestors to the tenth degree, for instance, will be 



20 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

very niucli the same as those of the ancestors of anybody 
else. To this there are but two exceptions or restrictions ; 
by marriages between cousins we may prevent the ancestors 
from doubUng in number at each degree in the scale ; 
besides, the tendency to marry in one's own rank of society 
may, as far as the character depends upon rank, restrict the 
power of equaUzation. The law of regression to the average, 
says Galton,* *' tells very heavily against the full hereditary 
transmission of any gift. Only a few out of many children 
would be likely to dilfer from mediocrity as widely as their 
mid-parent " (i.e. " an ideal person of composite sex whose 
stature is half-way between the stature of the father and 
the transmuted stature f of the mother "), " and still fewer 
would differ as widely as the more exceptional of the two 
parents. The more bountifully the parent is gifted by 
nature, the more rare will be his good fortune if he begets 
a son who is as richly endowed as himself." In spite of 
this, "there is nothing in these statements to invalidate 
the general doctrine that the children of a gifted pair are 
much more likely to be gifted than the children of a 
mediocre pair," but they will be, on the average, less removed 
from mediocrity than their mid-parent. Besides, among all 
the children of a small number of gifted couples, consider 
the most capable, and compare with the most capable of the 
children of a very large numler of mediocre parents ; the former 
will generally be inferior to the latter. Galton adds that 
the law of regression to the average is "even-handed," 
because it "levies an equal succession tax on the trans- 
mission of badness as well as goodness." If this be so, 
why should the educator trouble about hereditary fatalities 
if, on the average, hereditary exceptions are neutralized and 
the average hereditary type persists ? It is precisely this 
average that education professes to affect ; the whole question 
is therefore one of knowing if the qiialities of the average 



* ''Natural Inheritance," p. 106 (TV.). 

f Ibid. p. 87. For the meaning of transmuted^ vide ibid. p. 6 (2>.). 



rOWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 21 

type, wliicli unaklccl licrediby does not transform, and leaves 
persistent, cannot be transformed by other influences, and 
notably by education itself. 

Galton finds that in a cultured environment, out of every 
hundred women thirty-three are artistic, and twenty-eight 
are artistic out of every hundred men.* Instead of being 
satisfied with this result as far as women are concerned, he 
considers the difference very small, when we consider the 
large share occupied by accomplishments in the education of 
w^omen. And he concludes that the effect of education, 
compared with that of natural talent, is very small. This 
is a very arbitrary interpretation ; the preceding statistics 
rather show the power of education, because the weaker sex, 
whose education has for centuries been inferior to that of 
man, is nevertheless able to show thirty-three per cent, of 
artistic women as compared with twenty-eight per cent, of 
artistic men. Besides, it is clear that natm-al talent is of 
the greatest moment in art ; special aptitudes are necessary, 
partly due to the conformation of sensorial centres, and con- 
sequently to entirely organic causes over which education 
has little control. How can you make a singer out of one 
who cannot sing in tune, or a musician out of a man who 
has no ear and who cannot detect a false note, or a painter 
out of a man who has not a delicate sense of sight and a 
natural taste for form and colour ? 

Our problem is therefore the discovery of the qualities 
upon which education can exercise effectual influence. In the 
case of stature, this influence is, on the average, zero ; stature 
is the result of determined physiological conditions which 
can only vary within very narrow limits. If a man were 
five yards high, he would cease to be a man ; he would be a 
new species. To make use of the constancy of stature and 
the powerlessness of education to increase our height, in 
order to prove both the constancy of intellectual qualities 
and the powerlessness of education, is an unmistakable 

* *' Natural Inheritance," p. 154 (Jr.). 



22 EDUCATION FECM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

fallacy into which the fanatics of heredity are always falling. 
If the experience of ages teaches us that education is unable 
to modify stature or eye-colour (upon which Galton has 
brought some of his statistics to bear *), it also teaches us 
that it can modify intelligence and morality. The intel- 
lectual power of a man is obviously increased by instruction. 
Instruction will not, no doubt, create genius, but it can 
give to the recipient a considerable sum total of knowledge 
and talent. AYithout the aid of instruction even the born 
genius would remain sterile. All the arguments, therefore, 
of the statisticians on the constancy of stature and of eye- 
colour prove absolutely nothing against the possible increase 
of the intellectual and moral capacities. 

History demonstrates the view I advance. While stature 
and eye-colour in the same nation remain constant, the 
average intelligence and morality undergo the most obvious 
and often the most rapid changes. Take the Scotch of two 
hundred years ago — a sanguinary and vindictive race, with 
a heavier record of homicide than even Sicily and Corsica. 
Now, according to the statisticians, they are the mildest and 
most inoffensive people in Europe, and the list of murders and 
assassinations is less than anywhere else. Mr. Leslie Stephen 
has drawn attention to the rough and unfair national 
verdicts based upon the characteristics of " lay figures " of 
John Bull, etc. Their stature, their eyes, and the colour 
of their hair are nevertheless unchanged.! A similar change 
may be noticed in the Swiss, Piedmontese, Eoumelians, 
Cossacks, and Bulgarians. The inhabitants of the Marquesas 
are transformed from cannibals into peaceful and hard- 
working men. The Servians have become kind and gentle, 
while their kinsmen and neighbours, the Montenegrins, are 
still violent and vindictive. M. Colajanni also calls atten- 
tion to the fact that one tribe of the Redskins may be 
addicted to theft, while another of the same blood will be 



* ''Natural Inheritance," p. 138 (TV). 

f Vide Coiaj;mui, " La Sociologia Criminale," vol. ii. 



rOWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FOECES. 23 

honourable and straightforward. The Mongol is a coward 
in China, brave in Japan. The Jew is a business man, a 
banker, a money-lender in Europe ; in Abyssinia he hates 
business, and takes to agriculture; while in the Caucasus 
he is a warrior ! M. Tarde was perfectly right when he 
said that every race can be either " civilized or barbarized." 
Compare modern and ancient Greece, Calabria of the present 
day and Magna Graecia, and we descend from the highest 
civilization to the worst form of barbarism. In the history 
of Eome, M. Tarde sees open to every race, whatever its 
origin or colour, " a great and glorious competition," as it 
were, in which each in turn — Italy, Spain, Arabia, Gaul, 
Germany, Carthage, and Libya — won the prize of eloquence, 
poetry, and valour, and was seated upon the throne of the 
Caesars. "By the grafting on a vast scale of Roman 
influence far beyond even the limits of the empire, it came 
about that savage humanity was nowhere unaffected." And 
did not the "Christianizing" of so many different races 
produce still more astonishing metamorphoses ? Compare 
the German Christian with his savage predecessor, the 
Eussian Christian with the old Euss. Where do we see, 
in all these instances, hereditary fatalities and the impotence 
of education ? 

Even within short periods, statistics exhibit the variations 
of morality and the more serious forms of crime. From 
year to year crime among minors is sensibly increasing ; 
in a short time it has tripled. In England and in Spain, on 
the other hand, it is decreasing. The number of foundlings 
in the whole of France has risen from 26,000 in 1861 to 
44,000 in 1885, and in Paris alone, from 2320 in 1877 to 
3151 in 1883. The Assistance Pullique at Paris places (as 
far as it c^n) most of these children with respectable 
peasants in the department of Mevre. These children, " the 
off's]3ring of vice and misery," should be infected from their 
birth with germs of the most fatal character, and M. Joly 
forcibly remarks that, if heredity played the predominant 
role attributed to it by the school of Lombroso, the conduct 



24 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

of these children would be deplorable. On the contrary, 
the peasants who have given them a home have rarely had 
to regret it, and in this department, " one of the freest from 
crime, these neo-peasants leave hardly any appreciable 
stain." The department of Herault, which up to 1857 
ranked among the two or three most moral departments in 
France, " being freest from crime," has become by degrees 
since 1868 more and more crime-stained, until it is now the 
81st on the list. We may add, with M. Joly, that three 
quarters of the inhabitants of Herault represent " individuals 
who have suddenly become enormously wealthy." What has 
heredity done against the temptations, suggestions, and 
examples of every kind which have sprung up in this depart- 
ment, and which have kindled the lust for pleasure with 
the lust for riches ? 

The short stature of the French with respect to the 
English has been attributed in a great measure to the 
devastating effect of the twenty-two years of war which 
followed the Revolution. Throughout that period, there 
was going on a continual selection of tall and strong men, 
and a rejection of all who were short and weak. The first 
mainly fell victims to death or disease, and those who returned 
home did not do so until they had spent the best years 
of their youth on the field of battle. The feeble remained 
at home to propagate the race. At first sight this would 
seem to have been a perturbing influence of great power. 
But according to even Galton's principles, this power is 
much exaggerated. On the one hand, the women were not 
affected by the process of selection, and therefore the perturb- 
ing influence was only one-half of what it would otherwise 
have been. Besides, the war only affected one generation ; 
even if it had swept away all the men of high stature, the 
effect on the next generation would have been practically 
nil, for stature is determined by the total ancestry, and by 
fortuitous circumstances, such as are here and there the 
cause of a great man being born of mediocre pareuts. 
Nevertheless, if selection were to go on for generations, 



POVv^ER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 25 

it would iu the long run be effectual. In artificial selection 
applied to animals, it proceeds by the persistent and un- 
relenting destruction of every individual not corresponding 
to the type, or by a suspension of natural functions 
continued from generation to generation. Nothing less 
than methodic and continuous action is necessary to main- 
tain a series of generations above what may be called 
the point of normal equilibrium. But education is nothing 
but action of this kind, a method continuously applied 
throughout the ages to whole generations. Society requires 
for all its f auctions a certain number of average capacities, 
and thus produces constant selection. The educator 
enlightens and moralizes masses of individuals, not merely 
for a single generation, but for all time. In fact, education 
acts on the most flexible and most malleable part of our 
being, on the intellect, on the sentiment, and on the will. 
Although it cannot add five yards to our stature, it can add 
circmnvolutions to the brain, or carve in it lines which 
without its aid would not have existed. It moulds the 
brains of a race. If, therefore, heredity always tends to 
restore the average equilibrium, education can raise the 
point of etjuilibrium, it can raise the centre of oscillation, 
and modify the normal average towards which heredity will 
produce regression. If heredity is the great force of 
conservation, ideas are the great force of progress ; the 
former is statical and ensures equilibrium, the latter 
dynamical and ensure motion. It is owing to the former 
that water finds its own level, but the latter raise that 
level, just as the stream rises above low-water mark. 

To secure in the physical domain the equivalent of what 
takes place iu the intellectual and moral domain, we must 
assume that the stature of the tallest and most gifted could 
be gradually attained by means of imitation. This would 
happen if a genius were to invent some way of adding an 
inch to his statm-e ; his proceedings would be eagerly 
imitated, and generations would very soon arise with stature 
slightly increased. Suppose another new invention for 



26 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

the same purpose, and a fresh imitation by all of moderate 
height ; we should have in a short time, owing to the 
fixative power of heredity, a new increase of stature in the 
human race. An idea, in its origin, is a novelty ; it is 
rapidly reproduced by imitation, and thus it goes to increase 
the common fund. Education fixes the acquired ideas, and 
develops the capacity for finding new ones. 

We are asked if progress, which is the raising of the 
average level, depends especially upon the quality of ordi- 
nary men or upon the worth of exceptional men. The 
second factor is obviously the most primitive and the most 
important ; first we must have an exceptional man to con- 
ceive a new idea, and ipso facto introduce a new force into 
the totality of social forces. But the role of mediocre men 
is to reproduce and imitate the idea, and thereby to fix it 
and to give it currency, and ipso facto to also make it one 
of the factors determining the average level of the species. 
The ultimate result is a raising of this level. Now, educa- 
tion acts simultaneously upon mediocre and superior men. 
It raises the mediocre to the level already attained by 
anterior generations ; it also raises higher natures to that 
level, and in virtue of their native and exceptional qualities 
enables them to surpass it. 

An attempt has been made to establish differences with 
respect to heredity between inferior, average, and superior 
men, by which the inferior and superior would be subjected 
to a stronger, and the average to a weaker heredity. These 
distinctions are artificial ; heredity acts in precisely the 
same way with each individual ; only in mediocre natures 
its effects are not so obvious, because they re-enter the 
common mould. Not less artificial is the distinction 
between men according to their educabiUty. M. Eibot 
believes that the influence of education is most marked in 
average natures, and leaves but slight trace upon the inferior 
or superior natures. This may be admitted in the case of 
very inferior or abnormal natures ; but as far as superior 
natures are concerned, Guyau fairly argues that the more 



POWER OF EDUCATION AND OF IDEA-FORCES. 27 

naturally intelligent we are, the more we are capable of 
learning' and becoming clever by education ; the more we 
are naturally generous, the more easily can we be educated 
into heroism. His conclusion is that genius is the simul- 
taneous realization of the maximum of abundantly fruitful 
heredity and educability.* 

To smn up — there is a via media between the prejudicea 
for and against education. If education does not manifest 
all the power of which it is capable, it is because it is rarely 
directed towards its true end, and by the means appropriate 
to that end. Hence ensues a loss of living forces by the 
neutralization and disorder of ideas. Ideas are sown in a 
somewhat haphazard fashion in the mind, and they also 
germinate exposed to the chance of external circumstances 
and inward predispositions ; selection is here fortuitous, as 
in the domain of material forces. Instruction is not enough ; 
instruction must itself become an education, a process of 
self-conscious and methodical selection between the ideas that 
tend to issue in action. The French are always crying for 
instruction ; others cry for culture, and they are right. 
The first word brings us to consider the nature of the 
subjects taught ; the second brings us to the degree of 
fertility acquired by the mind. Education should not be a 
simple acquisition of knowledge, but a cultivation of living 
forces, with a view to assuring the supremacy of the highest 
idea-forces. 

* " Education and Heredity,'* p. 106. 



28 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER II. 

PHYSICAL EDUCATION FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF 
EVOLUTION AND SELECTION. 

After psychological selection within the individual, we 
must consider social selection, which takes place between 
different individuals, or races, or nations. 

Every race has two essential means of superiority, the 
one physiological, the other psychological. It is of supreme 
importance that a race should be physiologically strong, 
and here alone the ordinary laws of natural selection are 
applicable, because we are in the domain of life. There is 
no idealist illusion to guard against ; the mens sana can 
only exist in the corpore sano ; all mental refinements in a 
race are not collectively equivalent to its healthy vigour, and 
consequently ii^ fertility. Even genius can only persist and 
progress in a vigorous race ; in fact, selection can only come 
into operation and produce a natural elite — the necessary 
condition of all progress — in a fertile and numerous, i.e. in 
a vigorous race. Therefore, whenever the intellect is over- 
worked at the expense of the body, the physiological level is 
lowered, and thereby the intellectual level ; for, sooner or 
later, generations physiologically enfeebled will find their 
cerebral power impaired. This result has been fully and 
clearly stated by Spencer and by Guyau.* The laws of 

* Mr. James Sully, one of the principal psychologists in England, Avrites 
as follows in a critical notice of Guyau's " Education and Heredity," in 
Mind: "Never, perhaps, has the fundamental en-or underlying our 
present excessively narrow and intensified intellectual culture been more 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND EVOLUTION. 29 

heredity are inevitable ; the lepjacy of impoverished organs 
to children means a lowering of mental capacity in the more 
or less near fntnre. In the struggle and selection of races 
throughout history, except when young and sometimes 
barbarous blood has been infused into the old stock of a 
nation, it fell lower and lower, become sterilized, and dis- 
appeared or declined, while other races were ascending. 

Instruction, in my opinion, may have two results — either 
dynamical, i.e. an increase of cerebral power, or purely 
statical, as, for instance, in the results of scientific and 
literary routine. In the former case it acts on heredity, and 
may produce hereditary transmission of cerebral power ; in 
the latter it does not act at all, or only acts in the wi^ong 
direction, by exhausting the nervous system. It is intel- 
lectual power ,that is transmitted from one generation to 
another, and not the knowledge acquired. Hence the 
criterion I lay down to test methods of education and in- 
struction : Is there an increase of mental, moral, and 
83sthetic power ? then the method is good ; Is the memory 
simply turned into a storehouse ? then the method is bad, for 
the brain is not a storehouse to be filled, but an organ to act. 

The physical and intellectual dangers of over-pressure are 
not unreasonably in these days occupying our attention. 
In our system of instruction, over-pressure really does 
exist in the case of hard-working pupils who wish to pass 
an examination. In the case of the majority, however, 
there is no over-pressure ; they simply waste their time, 
" wearing out the school benches." They take good 
care to retain nothing but vague and indistinct notions of 
everything that has been made to pass through their 
minds ; they are present, mere idle spectators, while their 

clearly demonstrated in the light of scientific principles than in this 
volume. To Guyau every individual is the temporary depositary of a part 
of the force of the race ; and our modern system of education, instead of 
aiming at preserving this force in its most efficient forms, seems rather to 
be beut on consuming it. 



80 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

masters make excursions through each special science ; what 
is over-pressure to others is only intellectual vagabondage 
to them. If all children were overworked, the race would 
very soon be lost ; as Guyau says, " The idle are, physically, 
the saviours of the race." Unfortunately, they contribute, 
on the other hand, to the maintenance of the race in intel- 
lectual and moral mediocrity, and they also give a wrong 
direction to public affairs. The advantages of their idle- 
ness, without its inconveniences, might have been secured 
if, instead of requiring from every one so much knowledge 
—most of which is useless — we had exacted only that 
amount of knowledge which is absolutely necessary, and a 
moderate quantum of ornamental knowledge, calculated to 
elevate the mind, and at the same time to interest it. If 
this were done, the numbers of the idle would be kept 
down, without falling into over-pressure and without 
eventually lowering the level of the race which we profess 
to elevate. We should not trouble ourselves about the 
number of things a child knows, but rather about hoiu he 
knows them, Jioiv he has learned them ; and especially must 
we inquire into the general vigour communicated to him by 
his lessons, for this vigour alone will be a net profit to the 
race. How is the soil renewed ? By the sun, the air, the 
rain, by the free action of forces incessantly at work ; un- 
disturbed on the surface, it is in a state of constant motion 
and germination beneath. So with the mind. At stated 
periods Nature must be aUowed her own way, nor must we 
rudely interrupt the work of unconscious and spontaneous 
organization, which is being accomplished within the brain ; 
we leave the power to which we owe the grass and the trees 
to act without interference beneath the soil. 

The Greeks knew and applied these laws. Did they not 
even separate gymnastics from music, i.e. from all the arts 
devoted to the muses ? Euripides wrote *' Iphigenia " after 
winning the crown at the Olympic games. In the schools 
of Charlemagne violent games and archery were practically 
compulsory. M. Philippe Daryll has justly remarked that 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND EVOLUTION. 81 

the indolence of Italy was introdnced into France with the 
Renaissance, first into court life, and then into literary 
society. The peasantry alone kept all its energy, of which 
it g-ave ample proof at the end of the eighteenth century. 
What the Medicis began — the impoverishment of the French 
race — BuonajDarte finished with his "twenty consecutive 
years of bloodshed." Add to this eighty years of imprison- 
ment in school. The founders of the " Ligue pour 1' Educa- 
tion physique " were therefore justified in urging the State 
to increase the number of open spaces for exercise, of public 
gardens, of fields for gymnastics, and especially for games. 
Games, in fact, are the best gymnastics,* because they alone 
are at once complete and attractive ; they exercise all the 
muscles and every part of the body ; they exercise all the 
faculties of the intellect — rapid intuition, mental vivacity, 
imagination, and especially will and energy — all the funda- 
mental qualities which make for superiority in the vital 
and intellectual competition of races. 

The system of " muscles unexercised " and " brains under 
hard labour " is still more disastrous for women than for 
men. Woman is, par excellence^ an instrument of natural 
selection, because of the qualities or defects she transmits to 
her children. Further, woman is the object of that second 
form of selection of which Darwin has exhibited the 
importance under the name of " sexual selection." In the 
animal world, by pairing couples, sexual selection results in 
the choice and triumph of the quahties most advantageous 
to the race — typical beauty, vigom', health, and fertility. 
In the human race, sexual selection often deviates, but in 
spite of this, the law favom^able to the species is as a rule 
maintained. Observation and statistics, in fact, show us 
that to excite love and to decide voluntary selection, the 
most powerful means a woman possesses are those which 
spring from external advantages ; then come those supplied 

* Vide Journal of Education, March, 1891 ; " The Place of Gymnastics 
iu Physical Training" (?'r.). 



32 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

by the moral qualities ; last and weakest are those due to 
intellectual attractions ; and even the latter depend far less 
upon acquired knowledge than upon natural faculties such 
as quickness, wit, insight.* Here a lesson in pedagogy is 
given by Nature herself, condemning the unnatural education 
at present in vogue. If indignation is expressed that man 
should be swayed by this hierarchy of quahties, an evolu- 
tionist like Spencer or Guyau will have no difficulty in 
showing that the apparent folly of lovers is really wisdom. 
Nature acts for the interests of the race ; her supreme end 
is the welfare of posterity, her means — the selection of the 
couples best suited to that end. Now, as far as the race 
is concerned, "a cultivated intellect, based upon a bad 
physique, is of little worth, since its descendants will die out 
in one or two generations." " Conversely, a good physique, 
however poor the accompanying mental endowments, is 
worth preserving, because, throughout future generations, 
the mental endowments may be indefinitely developed." 

Justly does Schopenhauer see in love a ruse of Nature, 
utilizing the individual for her own ends ; the woman who 
is capable of bearing five children is more useful to 
humanity than a woman who has merely taken her B.Sc, 
And with health, morality is most important to the race; 
last in order of importance come intelligence and instruction 
— especially scientific instruction ; love, blind as it seems, is 
really more farsighted than our pedagogic reformers. 

To sum up : in both sexes, physical equilibrium is the 
foundation of mental equilibrium, especially if we consider 
the means and the race. We must therefore develop body 
and mind at the same time. The evolution of brain and of 
the faculties takes place under conditions which must not 
be transgressed; otherwise generation transmits to generation 
an unstable organism. This is an instance of what may be 
termed reversion. 

* Spencer, "Education," p. 187. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE OBJECTS OF INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCA^ 
TION FROM THE NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

"What are the essential objects of mental edacation, and 
what is their hierarchical order ? Here, again, the doctrine 
of evolution and of natural selection may help us to answer 
this question. 

From birth to manhood, the individual reproduces in him- 
self the phases of this evolution of his species ; now, which 
are the most stable and which are the most unstable of the 
characteristics acquired by the slow process of selection 
and eventually traditional in the species ? The most stable 
characteristics are the oldest, and they are also the lowest, 
the most rudimentary, and the nearest the savage state ; and 
they are also the most stable in the individual. To what, 
then, should education direct all its efforts ? To whatever 
is at once the most elevated and the most unstable, and, 
i.e.^io the most disinterested and most general sentiments, to 
the most philosophical, the most moral, and the most aesthetic 
ideas. The rest will come of itself. Education must 
cultivate faculties which are the most elevated in character, 
and which have been most recently developed in the species 
by natural selection ; it has no other aim than the giving to 
these faculties greater fixity and solidity. It must civilize 
the little stivage wliich we call a child, and must at the 
same time prepare a new selection to the advantage of the 
best. 

The really disinterested and human faculties, which 

6 



34 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

should be selected from all the others, are— the love of truth 
for its own sake, the love of the beautiful, and the love of 
the universal good ; these, therefore, education must take as 
its principal object, in order to preserve and increase in the 
man what distinguishes him from the animal. 

Further, in these three faculties is an hierarchy, in which 
precedence is due to their evolution as a whole and to 
their pre-eminence. Priority must belong to the moral 
sentiment which is the most essential of the three to the 
individual and to society. The moral sentiment is also the 
first to be developed in the child by home-education, in 
the forms of affection and obedience. The ancients did not 
separate the good from the beautiful, and rightly, for they 
appeal more to the heart and are more within the grasp of 
the young than is abstract truth. The beautiful is therefore 
the second object of education. Moreover, as Yico says, the 
child can only proceed to reason through the imagination. 
Finally, it is important to develop, if not in the child at 
any rate in the youth, the love of and dehght in the search 
for scientific truth, which is the third object of education. 
I cannot agree with Eenan, who urges that science is 
superior to morality for the human race, that the discovery 
of a fact or of a law surpasses in so&ial fecundity the 
accomplishment of duty, and that genius is above virtue. 
The sentiments of justice and sympathy are the very bond 
which maintains the different members of the social organism 
in unity ; they are the hfe of the social organism. An 
ignorant community, practising public and private virtues, 
might live and even be happy. A community of mvants 
without morality would be unlikely to persist and would 
be unhappy. Morality is no less necessary to the progress 
than to the preservation of society, which can only progress 
and prevail over its neighbours by courage, discipline, 
mutual cohesion, devotion to common interests, and by the 
spirit of abnegation and disinterestedness. Science is 
objective, and its objects are always present, hidden like 
treasure in the soil ; they cannot be lost, and may always 



INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION. 35 

be discovered ; if one lucky blow with the pick does not 
lead to its discovery, another may, and many men may 
in this case replace an individual. On the other hand, in 
morality, as in art, there is something purely personal, a rare 
and precious combination of subjective elements which cannot 
be met with tAvice ; it is the imffahiU individuum. At the 
same time, a whole community of minds is condensed in a 
singie mind, a world of sentiments is condensed in a single 
heart ; and if this heart is not in existence to-day, it does 
not follow that it will be in existence to-morrow. Even in 
the development of the individual thought an idea is 
repeated ; an emotion, an impression can never be recalled. 
Guyau, the philosopher-poet, did not always take the trouble 
of writing down the thoughts that struck him. " It will 
come back when I want it," he used to say ; but if he felt 
an esthetic impression, one of those indefinable emotions 
which are due to the moment, the environment, and one's 
inmost nature, he hastened to wiite it in prose or verse and to 
fix this fugitive something which is really a " mental state." 
In fact, even science makes rapid progress only by the 
moral and assthetic sentiments which excite to the search 
after truth for its own sake. And in education, science is 
of far less importance than the scientific spirit which, traced 
to its remotest source, is essentially disinterested, and pro- 
duces an inevitable expansion of the ego. If the moral 
good, strictly so called, were ever taken from future humanity, 
there would still remain not only the beautiful, but also 
that other foretaste of the good, viz. the true. Would not 
a mind which has been elevated by a study of science for 
its own sake to general ideas and to the laws of the universe, 
retain a certain breadth, a certain habit of generalization, 
a capacity of abstracting the ego in the objective contempla- 
tion of things, i.e. a tendency to the impersonal and to the 
universal ? That is the educative power of science. It 
accustoms us to breathe the pm'e mountain air, to the sighfc 
of the distant horizon ; after descending to a lower level 
we feel confined and stifled. Can we conceive of a JSTewton, 



36 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

a Pascal, a Laplace, a Darwin, as having a narrow mind ? 
Without claiming that a man who is devoted to science is 
ipso facto virtuous, it must, however, be recognized that the 
love of the true (of what Trinitarians call the Word, the 
Son) paves the way for the love and for the kingdom of the 
Holy Spirit. " Man will always be lost in wonder and con- 
templation, even though the day may come when he no 
longer falls on his knees in prayer." * This wonder at and 
contemplation of the universal laws of nature can no more 
be unaccompanied by a change of the moral attitude than 
a man can look at the stars without lifting up his head. 

But if science takes us outside our ego, it is only by its 
most general and most speculative ideas, not by its particular 
details and practical applications. On looking at the question 
closer, we see that it is only the beautiful side of science 
that elevates and moralizes. Purely theoretical science, 
although apparently useless, is reaUy that which is pre- 
eminently beautiful, or that which as yet appears to be 
beautiful, in spite of the profound utility it may be to the 
future. The brute scientific fact, so to speak, or the brute 
abstract law, has no educative virtue; the fact, taking a 
direction, must appear as the visible incarnation of the 
highest and most universal laws, and the law in its turn 
must appear as a world of truths enveloped and expressed 
in an infinite number of sensible facts ; in a word, the 
sentiment of beauty springs from rich variety in unity. 
If at any time Science should be confined to practical appli- 
cations, she will no longer discover either new truths or new 
utilities. In science the useful springs from the beautiful ; 
beautiful theorems are found to be the most useful, but 
their discovery was due to their beauty and not to their 
utility. Every important truth was first a truth sought 
and admired for its beauty, and found by that instinct for 
the beautiful, which in scientific speculation is confounded 
with the instinct for the true. At first Kepler only saw in 



* Guyau, " L'Irreligion de ravenir.' 



INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION. 37 

the laws of the planetary orbits their sublimity ; similarly, 
Xewton asserted the doctrine of universal gravitation 
because he saw in it a universal harmony, a reduction of 
variety to unity, an infinite fertility in simplicity itself. 

" Rien n'est beau que le vral, dit un vei's respects, 
Et moi je lui i-eponds, sans crainte d'un blaspheme : 
Riea n'est vrai que le beau, rien n'est vrai sans beaute." * 

Further, Science needs for progress a certain idealism 
'which transports her from the world of narrow realities to 
the vast field of the possible. Even to the geometer, the 
ordinary figures presented to us by reality are only particular 
cases of infinite possible combinations. Nowadays the 
quantities we call real are no longer considered as anything 
but particular cases of the quantities we call imaginary. 
What is called real is quite a secondary matter to a Descartes, 
or a Pascal, or a Leibnitz ; they see beyond all realities, 
and live in a kind of " perpetual dream of the possible," f 
and see in physical phenomena but echoes of higher har- 
monies. Faraday compares his intuitions of scientific truth 
to " inward illuminations," ecstasies, as it were, raising him 
above himself. One day, after long reflection on thought 
and matter, he suddenly saw in a poetic vision the whole 
world '' traversed by lines of force," the infinite trembling of 
which produced light and heat throughout the immensities. 
And this instinctive vision was the origin of his theory. 
Let us pass in review the great initiators of modern science 
and the creators -of industry, the Keplers and Fultons, and 
we shall be struck by the idealistic and sometimes even 
Utopian tendency peculiar to them. They are in their own 
way dreamers, artists, poets, controlled by experience. Now, 
how can we develop this idealism, this Hfe of imagination, 
this enthusiasm for the possible soaring beyond realities ? 
By sound moral, aesthetic, and intellectual culture. 

Huxley proposes to make the natural and physical sciences 
the basis of education. Spencer, in his turn, by a kind of 

• Alfred de Musset, " Apres une Lecture " (Tr.). t M. Laugel. 



38 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDrOINT 

idolatry of science which is widespread in these days, makes 
of positive science ahnost exclusively the subject for youth, 
under the pretext that, in this hfe, geometry is necessary 
for the construction of bridges and railways, and that in 
every definite trade, even in poetry, we must have hiotvledge. 
How conclusive is poetry as an instance ! Is a Yirgil or 
a Eacine made by learning rules of versification ? The 
scientific man is not made by teaching him science, for true 
science, like poetry, is invention. We can learn to build 
a railway by rule of thumb, but those who invented railways 
did so only by the force of the intellectual power they had 
acquired, and not by the force of the mere knowledge they 
had received ; it is therefore intellectual force that we must 
aim at developing. And then returns the question : — Is the 
best means of strengthening and developing the intellect of 
our youth, to load the memory with the results of modern 
science, or is it to teach them to reason, to imagine, to 
combine, to divine, to know beforehand what oicght to be 
true from an innate sense of order and harmony, of the 
simple and the fruitful, — a sense near akin to that of the 
beautiful ? And besides, are youths educated to be engineers 
or poets ? Education is not an apprenticeship to a trade, 
it is the culture of moral and intellectual forces in the 
individual and in the race. 

Science is only relatively a good thing, according to the 
use we make of it; even art has its dangers; morality 
alone is absolutely good. This makes instruction, especially 
scientific instruction, a two-edged weapon ; its advantages 
are not without correlative disadvantages ; it may effect a 
disproportion between the knowledge acquired and the 
environment in which the individual is placed, and it thus 
exposes the community to a kind of universal " unclassing," 
from which spring discontent with one's lot in life, restless 
ambition, jealousy, and revolt against social order. It is, 
therefore, necessary to choose the objects of instruction and 
to adapt them to the circumstances of each individual ; we 
must not believe, as is too often believed in these days, that 



INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL EDUCATION. 39 

all knowledge is always profitable. Again, nothing is certain 
and nniversally good but lofty sentiments and great ideas ; 
moral education is profitable to all and for all ; instrnction, 
especially scientific instrnction, has no value except what 
education gives it. Acquired knowledge eventually produces 
good or bad effects according to the good or bad orientation 
of the ideas directing the condnct. In France the moral 
and social importance of a half-and-half grammatical and 
scientific instruction — ^left to chance, without any direction 
being given to it — has been considerably exaggerated. 
Instruction pure and simple is only a means, as yet indirect 
and uncertain, of moralizing and raising the nation, and 
this is because its end is twofold ; it becomes of value for 
good only when the ideas that dominate it make for good. 
Eor mind and body alike, health is the only thing of constant 
and certain value, and morality is the health of the mind. 

Further, entirely in opposition to the proposals of Huxley, 
Spencer, Bain, and many others, I do not give to positive 
science the first rank in the education of youth, because the 
sentiments are for us superior to the knowledge of facts or 
to abstract knowledge, and among the sentiments those in 
particular which have as their object the good and the 
beautiful. Too many savants forget that man does not live 
on bread or on algebra alone. Nowadays, positive science 
tends to suppress the traditionary morality of absolute duty 
and of sanction ; it tends to suppress the religions by which 
egoistic sentiments are restrained ; it tends, in fact, to 
suppress all social institutions which are not based upon the 
rights of majorities and on democratic principles. It would 
be idle to oppose the inevitable ; but do we not see that to 
prevent a return to the strife between men left to vital laws 
alone, we must appeal to all the resources of morality and 
[esthetics, such as the sentiment of beauty and the cultm-e of 
art ? Here are two children with a flower ; one, educated 
according to the "scientific method," tells us it is a 
gamopetalous, hypogynous dicotyledon; family, borragi neons; 
name, myosotis annua ; the other does not know all these 



40 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

names, but he admires it, loves it, and carries it to his 
mother ; you give a good mark to the former and a kiss to 
the latter. A poet is far more important to humanity than 
a botanist. If we lose a botanist, we can get another ; if 
we lose a poet, he is never replaced. Happily, the true 
botanist is himself sensible of the beauty of the flower he 
studies ; he plucks it in the forest or on the mountain, in 
the presence of nature, beneath the radiant heavens ; he 
becomes a poete malgre lui, a poet without knowing it. 
Monocotyledons and dicotyledons disappear. But the fields, 
the glaciers, remain behind — and the flower itself, with its 
charm. What does the beauty of nature prove ? Nothing 
more than the beauty of a tragedy ; but there are few 
theorems of greater importance to humanity than the senti- 
ment of beauty. The eye of the astronomer sees further 
than the heavens, and his disinterested admiration is more 
useful to humanity than even his discoveries. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SELECTION OF SUPERIORITIES. RATIONAL MEANS 
AVAILABLE. 

The education of the mind, as " we have seen, has as its 
aim the development of moral, sesthetic, and intellectual 
capacities ; as this development is unequal in different 
individuals, education issues in the manifestation and selec- 
tion of natural superiorities. These superiorities are not 
necessarily oppressive to others, unless they are at the dis- 
posal of an egoistic and tyrannical ambition ; of themselves, 
they are indispensable to the different and unequally elevated 
functions which every nation requires. On the whole, in 
fact, the only means available for the elevation of a nation 
is the existence in its midst of individuals and groups, elevated 
above the rest by talent, merit, and morality. Besides, 
the intellectual and moral elite is, in a measure, the hereditary 
depositary of great national traditions ; it connects the 
present with the past, and its duty is therefore to connect 
the past with the future. Hence the spirit of conservation 
and the spirit of progress equally call for the free selection 
of capacities, and their free access to the functions they are 
best fitted to perform. An imperfectly developed democracy 
may be instinctively and naturally hostile to everything that 
seems an elite ; it believes that equality, which is necessary 
and just in the domain of rights, is in all cases the only law ; 
it does not know (never having been taught) that the whole 
of nature progresses by the development of superiorities, by 
the onward march of the best — the best not only, as in the 



42 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

animal world, from the point of view of force, but also from 
the point of view of intellect, and especially from the point 
of view of morality. The first act of the collective life of 
an organism is to give the rest of the body a brain, which 
the rest of the body foUows for its own conservation and 
progress. The individuals forming the national body, 
although equal in rights, are no more equal in function and 
in importance than the cellules that compose the human 
body. We must not, therefore, wish to reduce everything 
to a dead level under the pretence of equalizing. The 
paradox of pseudo-equalky is equivalent to the statement : — 
"the human body is nothing but cellules, and all cellules 
are equal because in each we find nothing but carbon, 
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen." However, as M. Laffitte 
replies, let Shylock take his ounce of flesh off my arm 
or leg, and I remain myself ; but let him take it from the 
heart or from my brains, and my life is over.* It is the 
duty of the dominant class and the government to look high 
and to look ahead, to prevent this blind levelling down, to 
react against the natural downward tendency of the masses. 
A real democracy, far from excluding natural superiorities, 
on the contrary, favours them. 

In olden times the institution of a nobility was an attempt 
at a process of natural selection. M. Eibot has given 
excellent reasons why it might be illusory to count nowadays 
on either this form of selection, or, as Renan proposes, on 
imitating it for the advantage of savants^ academies, etc. 
The nobility formed an elite only in a very restricted sense, 
that of the w^arlike virtues. If the absolute superiority of 
the nobility is ah'eady a moot point, the dogma of hereditary 
transmission is in an equally precarious condition. Heredity, 
acting under quite ideal conditions, would no doubt end in 
continuous repetition of the same types ; but, as a matter of 
fact, so many other laws come into competition with it, so 
many accidental circumstances come into play and thwart it, 

* " Le Paradoxe de I'egalite," p. 38. 



THE SELECTION OF SUPERIOIUTIES. 43 

that the resemblance of parent and child is only approximate 
Is this resemblance in a given case sufficient or insufficient ? 
lias the law of heredity been stronger than the exception, or 
vice versa ? Experience alone can answer these questions ; 
but " to submit the nobility to the test of experience," says 
M. Ribot, " to discuss its title at every birth, would mean 
its extinction." Besides, there is another law, with which 
the institution of a nobility clashes, viz. the " impoverish- 
ment of heredity." Every aristocracy, every close corpora- 
tion, which has only been renewed from its own ranks, 
becomes gradually extinct. Water not renewed becomes 
foul ; the ocean alone is large enough to contain within it 
enough waves, motion, and life to prevent it from becoming 
stagnant. 

M. Ribot has determined the causes of this physical and 
mental impoverishment by showing that heredity is a 
force incessantly struggling against opposing forces, that it 
has its " struggle for existence," and that, each generation, 
even when victorious, issues from the struggle more weakened 
than before by its losses. It follows that, instead of a 
selection of superiorities, it, if isolated, produces in the long 
run a selection of inferiorities. Education alone is able, but 
imperfectly, to counterbalance these effects of heredity. 

As an hereditary nobility is no longer possible in these 
days, and as, moreover, it has lost all its advantages, we 
must seek other processes of selection to constitute that 
natural aristocracy which we aU agree is necessary, an 
aristocracy open and not closed, founded on talent and merit, 
and therefore what we may call a democratical aristocracy. 

Nature, to carry out her selections, acts on the maximum 
number of individuals ; this is a primary process it will be 
as well to imitate, but it can only be partially imitated, for 
nature is blind, and man is intelligent. It is impossible to 
give to all alike an instruction such as that dreamed of 
by the partisans of "integral instruction." There is an 
antinomy between the law of selections, of capacities, and 
the law of adaptation. If the field offered to selection be 



44 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

not wide enough, it ceases to operate ; if it were too wide, 
it would end in the development of capacities or pretensions 
which no longer find their use and ultimate adaptation. 
The uuclassed will then apply to the State itself, and accuse 
it of not having furnished them with employment for the 
real or professed capacities education has developed in them. 
But the acquisition of knowledge is one thing, and the 
culture of the moral and intellectual faculties is another. 
The former, if beyond due bounds, and unadapted to the 
environment in which the child should live, must in the 
long run create a number of the uuclassed ; but we can 
always, with advantage to all, supply in lavish profusion 
noble ideas and noble sentiments. The moral qualities — ■ 
courage, justice, goodness, devotion — are equally necessary 
under any circumstances ; and more, they constitute, with 
physical vigour, the main strength of the species ; we must 
therefore develop them in each individual. The intellectual 
capacities — observation, reflection, judgment, method, etc. — 
are both useful to the individual and to the race. But it 
is by no means necessary for their development to apply 
thsm in the case of each individual to every object, nor to 
the maximum number of possible objects. The choice of 
objects must be regulated — but only in its sum total — by 
the present and future condition of the child. 

The mistake into which we nowadays fall, and with our 
eyes open, is that of confounding the general education of 
the faculties with general and more or less encyclopgedic 
instruction. It is by no means necessary, to be an intelli- 
gent man, to have learned organic chemistry, the history of 
Egypt, or the geography of Patagonia. I should therefore 
propose to lay down this rule : make moral and intellectual 
education as universal as possible, and restrict oljects of 
instruction to the minimum absolutely necessary. In a 
word, the culture of the faculties is always good, for all 
subjects; what may be mischievous is the choice of the 
objects of knowledge. Unfortunately, our educators turn 
their whole attention to the objects and to the matter of 



THE SELECTION OF SUPERIOEITIES. 45 

instruction ; a kind of pedagogic materialism makes them 
neglect the mind to the advantage of everything external to it. 

It is of importance in education to avoid all premature 
classification and specialization of minds, other than that 
which results from the degree of instruction chosen by the 
parents for their children. There must be a primary, a 
secondary, and a higher education, forming a natural 
hierarchy ; and each of these should maintain the maximum 
unity, generality, and elevation. For "the wind bloweth 
where it listeth ; " we can never tell beforehand where it 
will blow, unless we are on the mountain's crest where it has 
more liberty and space. 

The second process of selection employed by nature is the 
subordination of the purely individual interest to the general 
interest of the species. But there again nature and man 
proceed in different ways. Nature, in her disdain for 
individualities, sacrifices them to the strongest ; in humanity 
it is impossible for the greatest number to be, according to 
Kenan's aristocratic theory, " sacrificed " to a few privileged 
individuals ; on the contrary, only by not sacrificing any one 
do the superiorities emerge in the intellectual and moral 
world. This is a predominant distinction between human 
selection and animal or vegetable selection. The more the 
higher order of minds is surrounded by minds already elevated 
and capable of understanding them, the more is this environ- 
ment favourable to their development. Education must 
therefore be harmful to none and useful to all. Many of 
the reforms advocated at the present moment in France 
would end in raising the level of intellectual and moral 
education for a few selected individuals, but would lower 
it as a whole for the rest. Such means as these are in 
contradiction to the end in view. If you narrowly restrict 
your field of operations and of the culture of the faculties, 
you thereby diminish the intellectual and moral fecundity 
of the race. The " scientific " elite dreamed of by Kenan, 
VN'hich with science as its instrument would have the right 
and the power to govern the world, can itself be only the 



46 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

product of an artificial and narrow selection ; tlie elite should 
rise spontaneously and from our midst ; its rule must be 
accepted. 

It is true that education should not directly propose to 
itself, with the utilitarians (after Bentham), " the greatest 
interest of the greatest number," the completest possible 
satisfaction of the greatest number of private interests. 
Suppose, for instance, that a system of culture (classical 
culture, for example) were recognized as the most capable 
of raising the intellectual and moral level of the nation, 
"without perhaps being the method of treatment best 
adapted to educe from mediocrities the greatest possible 
positive and immediately useful return to each individual ; 
we should then have to choose between quahty and quantity ; 
we should have to ask ourselves if it be of more importance 
to this nation to increase its moral and intellectual greatness, 
by means of a sufficient number of elevated minds, or to 
have within it only a large number of mediocrities keeping 
to the statu quo and busying themselves each with his own 
individual interests. Before a great ship is launched, she 
must have tall masts, and therefore there must be such things 
as high trees ; so we have to decide between that method of 
culture which produces the largest number of small plants 
all of the same size, and that which is calculated to raise 
pines to a towering height. But there is this difference, 
that in the moral and intellectual order, the high plants do 
not stifle the smaller, on the contrary, they help them by 
their shelter, by their sap, and by their strength. The 
educator must not consider the mere brute advantage that 
each individual will derive for himself, but the degree of 
elevation attained by all, and especially by the best, to the 
profit of all. To lower the level, under the pretence of 
equalizing those low down in the scale, is the safest way of 
making them descend lower still with those who might have 
been able to ascend. Let us, on the contrary, raise the 
moral and intellectual level ; let us ever raise it, not of 
course so as to make it inaccessible, but so as to gradually 
elevate the best, who in their turn will raise the others. 



CHAPTER y. 

UTILITARIAN EDUCATION AND TRUE NATIONAL 
INTERESTS. 

The principles I have laid down condemn ntilitarianisiii in 
education. As science only progresses by the spirit of dis- 
interestedness, and as industry assumes scientific theory, 
industry itself only advances by aid of the disinterested love 
of the true, which is connected with the beauty of truth 
itself. Genius is only this love aided by exceptional 
faculties ; it only finds because it seeks, and it only seeks 
because it loves. Further, the universal craving for know- 
ledge that may be applied prevents the selection of genius ; 
to look for useful truths before beautiful truths is to look 
for the fruit before the tree. And besides, how can we 
gauge beforehand the utility of a truth ? When he shouted 
" Eureka ! " Archimedes did not know that he had also 
invented balloons. A Montgolfier, limited to the applica- 
tion of the principle discovered by another, is not as valu- 
able to humanity as a EucHd or an Archimedes ; an Edison 
is not equivalent to a Leibnitz. It is not with the utili- 
tarians that the pre-eminence will remain, for they will be 
barren as far as genius or even simple superiorities are con- 
cerned. A Descartes, a Leibnitz, or a Newton is neither 
born nor developed in a race exclusively devoted to the search 
for immediate utility ; such men can only breathe the 
atmosphere in which truth and beauty shine with a dazzling 
light, and where they are sought for their own sake. 

To the French a utilitarian education would be peculiarly 



48 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

harmful, because it would be in contradiction to the 
temperament of the race. "With all our faults of mobility, 
thoughtlessness, our over-hasty or superficial judgment, we 
have a quality of the first rank which has always saved us 
from the gravest consequences of om- fau'ts — enthusiasm. 
If France is to be faithful to her genius, she must remain 
" the land of enthusiasm," and this sentiment, which can in 
time of need arouse a whole nation, is best excited by the 
beautiful. 

Eealistic and utilitarian education is the bane of political 
communities, and especially of democracies like France. 
We know that an imperfect democracy is the cult either of 
the individual or of the number considered as a mass of 
individuals. Hence every notion of a real and continuous 
fatherland, extending beyond the present collection of indi- 
viduals and beyond the present majority, tends to disappear, 
to the advantage of individuals, whether dispei'sed or massed 
together. The will of the whole nation is therefore con- 
fused with the suffrage of the greatest number, i.e. with the 
interest of those who chance to have the upper hand at the 
time, and who should only consider themselves as the repre- 
sentatives of the whole, including the very minority whom 
they have defeated. The real national will is not exhausted 
when we speak of the sum total of individual wills at any 
moment. Millions of incoherent and scattered wills do not 
make a national will, and the present generations are only a 
fraction of the fatherland ; a jjISbiscite dictated by circmn- 
stances, by the passions or interests of the mass at a given 
moment, is not the national will, and still less is it the 
ethnical will. It is a momentary cyclone, and not a con- 
stant and continuous current like the Gulf Stream. That 
policy which only considers the votes of the moment, with- 
out looking far ahead, is a tempestuous policy, and if 
education followed the same method, if it did not work for 
the whole race, for real " universality " which includes the 
future and the present, it would tend to compromise the 
existence of the nation, which would only be hving from 



UTILITARIAN EDCCATION. 49 

hand to moufch. Public spirit would be weakened in the 
seeking after personal and immediate interests ; numbers 
woukl stifle intellect, and the ultimate result would be 
univei'sal debasement. 

Again, suppose a country alone in the world or surrounded 
with a kind of wall of China ! It still must struggle against 
its neighbours and obtain, not only equality with, but 
superiority over, them under pain of degeneration. Nations, 
as we know, are far from submitting to the beautiful laws 
of equality, of which a Rousseau or a Proudhon dreamed ; 
now, to be superior to other nations, or even not to be 
simply inferior to fchem, a nation must perforce arouse 
within it every possible superiority. That is why education 
is not only a national but an international problem. The 
French felt this very keenly after their disasters in 1870 — as 
did the Germans after Jena and in the days of Fichte. But 
the French have gone too far in attributing their defeats to 
a low level of knowledge and mere instruction ; and con- 
sequently they have been carried away by utilitarian con- 
siderations. The French people, in their ignorance, cried, 
" We are defeated, we have been betrayed ; " no less naively 
did educated men say in their turn, "We were defeated 
because we do not hioiv geography, or history, or mathe- 
matics, or mechanics." And from highest to lowest they 
have overloaded the scientific side of- the curriculum at the 
expense of classical literature. The result has been, as is 
now recognized, the lowering of the level of all subjects. 
Yictories are due to much deeper causes than to the intel- 
lectual condition or to scientific knowledge ; they are due to 
the directing ideas, to the sentiments and the will, to 
organization and discipline, to the esiMt de corps animating 
the whole of the army and the nation. M. Hoenig, the 
author of a volume on " L'Importance de la discipline pour 
I'Etat, le peuple, et I'armee," tells us that the German recruits 
enrolled in his company had preserved but little recollection 
of what they learned on the benches at school. For some 
years he had to ascertain the amount of instruction of these 



50 EDUCATION FI10.^I A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

recruits ; now tke simplest facts of their own country were 
often unknown by these new additions to the regiment. 
" We set a number of questions on their own country, and 
the answers were incredible. After the war of 1870-71, 
many did not even know the name of the Emperor of 
Germany." Here, comments Urad,* we are a long way off 
that wonderful knowledge of geography which was so wide- 
spread among the rank and file as to enable them to find 
their way along any road in a foreign country. According 
to Marshal Yon Moltke, " education is far more important 
than scientific instruction, because knowledge alone does not 
give that self-sacrifice which is wanted for the service of the 
country. Authority above, obedience below, discipline is 
the whole soul of the army. An undisciplined army is an 
institution always costly, unreliable in war, full of danger in 
peace. It is this discipline that fitted our armies to win 
three campaigns." And by discipline the Germans mean 
all the military virtues, the qualities of the will and heart, 
and not merely those of the intellect. At the beginning of 
the century, on the eve of the catastrophe that nearly proved 
the ruin of Prussia, Schaarnhorst, the future reorganizer of 
the German army, wrote to his king, " We have begun to 
think more of the science of war than of military viitues ; 
but this has ever been the ruin of nations." And miUtary 
virtues become more and more necessary as armies increase 
in size ; individual heroism loses its importance and general 
discipline becomes essential. Great armies, in fact, find 
cohesion, rapidity, and security necessary to their existence. 
In case of a normal mobilization, Germany would gather 
beneath her standards three million armed men, and with 
the reserves six millions ; the war footing of Russia is 
2,900,000 ; of France, 1,900,000. If the present German 
army were set in motion on a single road, with all its 
reserves and trains complete, it would reach from one end 
of the empire to the other. With such masses of men, 

» "Le Peuple Allemaud." 



UTILITARIAN EDUCATION- 51 

moral and material discipline alone can maintain unity and 
promptitude of movement, as well as safety of supplies. 
Certainly the schoolmaster contributes to the final success, 
if he himself has taught and clearly formulated discipline, 
self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty — for these are at the 
same time ideas and sentiments. The principal conditions 
of victory for a modern army are, therefore, the develop- 
ment of solidarity, respect for the hierarchy, in a word, 
everything that organizes and unifies ; geography and 
history, physics and chemistry, go for nexc to nothing, and 
that is why a Von Moltke places moral education far above 
purely intellectual and scientific instruction. 

What is true of an army is true of a whole nation ; every 
people divided, disorganized, and individualized to excess, 
becomes mere human dust ; a whirlwind sweeps it away. 
The Emperor Frederick III., at the beginning of his reign, 
wrote to Bismarck : " I consider that the problem of the 
care to be given to the education of youth is intimately 
connected with social questions. A higher education should 
be made accessible to more and more extended strata^ but 
we must avoid a semi-instruction which will create grave 
danger, and give rise to pretensions which the economic 
forces of the nation will be unable to satisfy. We must 
equally avoid neglecting our educative mission by exclusively 
attempting to increase instruction." 

The pedagogic problem, in fact, is eventually confused, 
not only with questions of internal and external policy, but 
also with the social question. The Germans realize this 
more readily than any other people, because, with them, the 
danger is more pressing. The increase of nations and races 
is to modern communities an element of internal force and 
external expansion, but it also threatens them with far- 
reaching disturbance. In Germany the socialist vote has 
increased from 311,000 in 1881, to 800,000 in 1887, and 
to a milhon and a half in 1890. "When Germany," said 
one of the socialist leaders in the Reichstag, " has a popula- 
tion of sixty milhons, the government tvill pass into the hands 



52 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

of the luorlcinj classes ly the mere effect of universal suffrage. 
Now, wliile the population of France remains stationary 
and is comparatively decreasing, the Germans have a yearly 
increase of half a million ; i.e. the population of Germany 
by the end of the twentieth century will be 170 millions. 
By the end of the next century the government and the 
disposal of the mihtary power of Germany may be in the 
hands of this ever-increasing socialism ; we see that 
invasion might threaten the French race from without at 
the very time she is threatened with disruption within. It 
has been rightly said that the policy " of blood and iron " 
now advocated between nations by Germany may some day 
be quite as legitimately invoked between classes. 

To sum up — education has to take into account a 
twofold group of forces, those of conservation and those of 
progress. The former are at first maintained in the race 
by natural heredity, the latter by tradition of every possible 
kind, i.e. a sort of self -imitation by society throughout all 
time. The latter are chiefly developed by the initiative, 
invention, and search after novelty of minds constituting 
a governing elite and an aristocratical democracy. Education, 
by natural and not by artificial means, must assure the 
selection of capacities with a view to progress, with no less 
care than she must pay to securing the persistence of the 
conservative tradition which is the basis of society itself. 
It must therefore, in the true sense of the word, elevate every 
mind, it must only bestow attention upon what is moralizing, 
what is disinterested, and upon that which looks far ahead. 
It must renounce the superstition of knowledge which is 
only knowledge, of truth which is only truth, of fact which 
is only fact. A nation pre-eminently needs what is known 
as " public spirit," i.e. a spirit of devotion to the common 
weal ; it needs all the social and also all the intellectual 
virtues, which as we have seen consist in the disinterested 
love of the true and the beautiful. Utilitarian and 
positive education, or what goes by that name, is therefore 
more fatal than any other system to the fertility and force 



UTILITARIAN EDUCATION. 53 

of the nation. It is just now making some pro::^ress in 
Germany by the development of the Realschulen, which is 
causing no Uttle anxiety to enUghtened minds, and no doubt 
is preparing some checks for the G-ermans in the future ; 
let us maintain in our midst, so as to preserve and increase 
all OLir chances of success, a really liberal education, the 
only education that has ever been at the root of a nation's 
power. If individuals, if parents themselves, are always 
tempted to forget the general and national aim of education, 
the State ought to keep it constantly in view. France cannot, 
in the instruction of her children, consider the immediate 
and individual interest of the child, as the children them- 
selves and the parents do ; she must work for the future 
of the nationality and of the race, for those future genera- 
tions which represent an infinitely greater number of men 
than the present generation, and who are certainly the 
better part of our fatherland. The greater part of the 
knowledge that will be useful to the individual in his future 
profession, he will acquire by degrees as he wants it, but 
education has to make men and citizens incarnations of 
humanity itself. A liberal education can only deal with 
the necessary and the beautiful ; in mo3t cases there is too 
much of " the useful " in it. Everything that is only 
useful is only relatively so, and therefore, relatively useless. 
The beautiful, the good, and speculative truth are alike 
universally and eternally useful. 



54 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



BOOK II. 

SCIENTIFIC HUMANITIES EEOM THE 
NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE HUMANITIES AND THEIR GENERAL OBJECT. 

The object of the humanities, as the name implies, is to 
awaken in the mind of the child ideas and sentiments which 
are really human, and which, if we may say so, connect the 
mind of youth with that of the whole of humanity. In 
other words, we must implant the best part of human 
evolution in the mind of the individual. For that purpose 
we must develop in the subject the faculties which make the 
man, and we must give for odjects to those faculties the 
highest traths and the loftiest sentiments to which the mind 
of man has attained. Higher education, assuming minds 
already formed, treats these objects from every side, and 
even seeks to discover new objects. Knoivledge is its 
principal end. Primary education, while aiming at the 
development of the faculties of the child, is reduced to 
occupying itself chiefly with these objects, the knowledge of 
which is essential to all ; its object is the minimum of 
indispensable knowledge, just as the object of higher 
education is the maximum of possible knowledge. With 
secondary education it is quite different, and this is forgotten 



THE HUMAXITIES AND THEIR GENERAL OBJECT. 55 

hj almost all who have not studied the problem philoso- 
phically. No doubt secondary education has objects which 
it brings mto relation witli the mind, for, as M. Kabier says, 
*' the mind is never exercised on nothing," but it is none 
the less true that the proper aim of secondary education is 
the formation, development, and evolution of the mind. 
Vie must therefore take not things, but man himself — or 
more generally speaking, humanity — as our object, and 
that is why studies of this kind deserve par excellence the 
name of humanities. It also follows that the first rank 
in the humanities must be given, not to material, but to 
moral and social subjects. As M. Lachelier neatly puts 
it, " the real object of these studies is the nature and the 
moral life of man." Hence their character of lofty dis- 
interestedness, which has won for them the name of liberal 
studies. Primary education cannot be severed from a 
certain utilitarianism, because its object is the necessary^ 
what is essentially useful ; secondary education has mainly 
in view the good and the leautiful ; higher education is 
chiefly occupied with the tni?, either with what is already 
known, or with the discovery of new truths. These 
objects of instruction in secondary education are therefore 
not a matter of complete indifference ; we must choose by 
preference those the knowledge of which is best adapted to 
secure the evolution of the individual and of the nation to 
which he belongs. Instruction is here a means, education 
an end. In fact, literature being the freest and broadest 
expression of the human mind, it has been hitherto taken 
as the foundation of the humanities, just as philosophy is 
their crown. 

Such are the principles that have inspired education in 
France from the days of Montaigne, Bossuet, and Fenelon, 
to EolUn and the great names of the French University. 
Other nations have but followed in our wake. Germany 
absorbed and still retains the spirit of our great schools and 
universities. In Germany the distinction between students 
in letters and science is unknown. Those who intend to be 



56 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

doctors and engineers receive the same classical culture as 
those who are to be teachers or lawyers. The same 
Ahiturientenexamen, corresponding to the English matricu- 
lation or the French B. es. L., admits them to the 
universities, and comprises : (1) a German essay ; (2) a 
Latin essay ; (3) Latin prose ; (4) Greek prose ; (5) French 
prose (no dictionaries allowed) ; * (6) mathematics. The 
latter is all the science required ! In the viva voce they 
are examined in Latin and Greek authors, in Greek and 
Eoman, or German history. Geography is associated with 
history, lut is not made the otject of special study. Here we 
see to what is reduced the important part attributed by 
legend to geography among the Germans. Finally, they 
are questioned on arithmetic, geometry, and elementary 
algebra. No questions are asked in physics or natural 
history. In other words, all that is required is a sound 
knowledge of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. If students 
want to study science, they may do so to their hearts' 
content at the universities. There they will remain for 
four years, being on the average about nineteen when they 
take their aUturientenexanien, i.e. they will study until 
they are about twenty-three. This system shows that we 
can have scientific men without overloading them with 
science at school ; and that a good classic may afterwards 
build solid bridges or superintend the working of mines. 

In the gymnasiums there are not even special teachers for 
science.f At the State examination each candidate who 
proposes to adopt teaching as his profession has to offer him- 
self for examination in at least two branches ; for examjDle, 
classics and natural history, history and modern languages, 
mathematics and geography, etc. Their minds are, there- 
fore, less wrapped up in their special work, and, therefore, 
less narrow. Besides, fewer teachers are necessary. The 
German gymnasium has nine ordinary masters and four or 
five assistants, forming a simple and compact staff, such as 

* A Latin-German Dictionary is now allowed (Tr.). 
t This is gradually ceasing to be the CUse (2r.). 



THE HUMANITIES AND THEIR GENERAL OBJECT. 57 

tlic French had about 1840, before the deplorable line of 
demarcation was drawn between science and letters. Since 
then, in addition to students in letters and science, the 
French have naval students, students at St. Cyr and the 
Poljtechnique, technical students — all fascinated by the 
practical end at which they aim, and profoundly indifferent 
to everything but just what is required from them. This 
parcelling out of studies into specialities, besides involving 
an inevitable lowering of general studies, is extremely 
mischievous in its influence on the special subjects which it 
is fondly imagined are thereby fostered. 

While remaining faithful to the traditions of classical 
education, Germany has wished to avoid the excesses into 
which, in some of our schools, the culture of the faculties 
for their own sake had fallen ; I mean that purely formal 
culture held in honour by the Jesuits, which exercised but 
did not nourish the mind, as if the mind as well as the body 
did not need the nourishment that stores up the living 
power and the exercises by which that power is made avail- 
able. But Germany, avoiding one pitfall, has fallen into 
another. In education she has given the first rank in moral 
and social science to historical and philological science ; i.e. 
she has fallen into erudition. Now, to learn facts, dates, 
and words is an arresting of what may be called the 
material of human evolution, instead of a penetrating into 
the real spirit of the humanities. Disconnected from moral, 
social, and philosophical considerations, history, geography, 
and hnguistics are still material sciences, just as physics or 
geology. And they have an additional inferiority in being 
not only much less scientific, but much less useful. 

In England, the school of evolution, originating in the 
school of utilitarians, and finding, moreover, in the nation 
itself, traditions of utilitarianism, has allowed itself to be 
led astray by the mirage of the natural sciences, and has 
aimed at making those sciences the bases of instruction. In 
the science of education it had thus opposed naturalism to 
what may be called " humanism." Spencer opens his volume 



68 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

on education by the statement that in all things the end in 
view is knowledge, a principle the falsity of which we have 
seen. Thus, throughout the book, Spencer is wavering 
between the ideal of primary and the ideal of higher educa- 
tion, without even a suspicion of what secondary instruction 
is. This idolizing of science is all the more surprising 
because, in his " Sociology," Spencer insists on the power- 
lessness of instruction to modify individuals and nations, 
on the inefficacy of elementary knowledge, on the omni- 
potence of heredity, and on the superiority of sentiments to 
abstract ideas. Spencer's pedagogy is thus at variance with 
his own views, and is eagerly pursuing an end of which it 
has exhibited the inadequacy. Fm-ther, he confuses the 
inward evolution of man with those outward objects the 
knowledge of which may modify but cannot cause it ; man 
is absorbed in nature, and the " humanities " are eliminated 
from such a system. 



CHAPTER II. 

FAULTS IN OUR TEACHING OF SCIENCE. 

"The natural sciences," it has been said, "are chiefly 
vahiable from the humanities they contain," The properly 
organized study of science has recently and justly been 
called " the scientific humanities." I propose to show what 
is meant by this organization. In my opinion the aim of 
the real scientific humanities should be the transformation 
of the material sciences into moral science, by teaching their 
spirit, methods, principles, and conclusions, and, fina-ly, 
their history and social consequences. We shall afterwards 
take up the question of the classic humanities, which, in my 
opinion, should be reformed in the same direction. 

Spencer can no longer in these days compare science to 
Cinderella, and literature to her haughty and frivolous 
sisters ; it seems clear that science nowadays is proud, and 
not litei'ature. The French University has allowed itself 
to be invaded by the different sciences, and has given to 
each of them an important part in the programme of 1885. 
It is now unanimously recognized that this scientific instruc- 
tion, far from raising the level of studies, has only lowered 
it. In spite of that, positive science is still so tyrannical in 
its influence on our educational system — thanks to its being 
a sine qua non in the competition for admission into the 
State schools — that it is important to ascertain its real 
value in education. 

Science gives us a model of what truth is ; it accustoms 
us to weigh evidence ; it gives us method — which has been 



60 EDUCATION niOlM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

called the virtue of the intellect. But if it presents 
advantages, it also, when isolated, presents grave dis- 
advantages which are forgotten by those who wish to make 
it the foundation of education. 

To justify the increasing importance attached to it, 
elementary instruction in science must avoid three pitfalls — 
it must neither be too material, too utilitarian, nor too 
special. You say you accustom the child to observe. To 
observe what ? Material objects, that it tm^ns round and 
round, takes to pieces, or breaks, if necessary, to discover 
their properties and structure ; it may be a stalk of hemp or 
flax, it may be corn or a flower, a piece of chalk or quartz, 
the pen he is using, a brush — any of the usual objects 
around him. Thus the child is accustomed to believe 
nothing lut ivhat he sees. This development of the positive 
spirit is useful in the domain of natural science, but it is 
not without danger in other fields, and needs a corrective. 
You also tell the child that each word should by its scientific 
definition express a thing absolutely accurate, represent able, 
and, in ultimate analysis, sensible ; an excellent habit in 
geometry and physics, in which we have to do with material 
things ; but material precision does not also give us clearness 
of moral vision ; when you speak to him of honour, duty, or 
his native country, what can they materiafly represent to his 
imagination ? What objects observable by the senses will 
be attached to these sublime names ? Eealities in the 
moral order ; but these realties are ignored by scientific 
instruction. 

The present study of science, with its infinity of detail 
and application, and unaccompanied by general and philo- 
sophical views, has a second fault — its too utilitarian 
tendency. No lofty aim is presented to the child's mind ; 
he can only say, " I learn arithmetic because some day it 
will be useful to me to know bow to count ; I learn physics 
because it will be useful to me to know the properties of 
bodies ; I learn mechanics because the subject is useful in 
making machines ; I learn natural history because it is 



FAULTS IN OUR TEACHING OF SCIENCE. 6L 

useful in hygiene and in medicine ; I learn geography 
because it is useful to know about different countries, and 
because it is said to be useful in time of war, etc. The 
child thus runs the risk of taking self-interest as the 
universal standard, and the more our curricula are over- 
loaded with unconnected special sciences, the less educated 
virtue they have. 

Let us go a step further. Supposing that the study of 
science — i.e. of science as at present conceived — gives depth 
to the mind, they continue in reality to restrict instruction 
to formal science. What are mathematics ? Pm^ely formal 
science. Arithmetic and algebra are the rhetoric of numbers. 
Given any abstract data you like, upon those data we then 
reasoD and reason, and from those data we draw deduction 
after deduction. General principles are applied to particular 
problems, and the solution of these problems becomes a 
petty mechanical talent, like the syllogistic talent of the 
Middle Ages, or like Eaymond-LuUe's reasoning-machine. 
The very science of motion, mechanics, the queen of the 
ages, is still based upon formal relations in space and time ; 
it is always making its deductions and reasoning as far as it 
can on an hypothesis which is the equivalent in science of 
the subject of a Latin speech in hteratm-e. It is true that 
in the one case we must reason accurately, and that in the 
other it is not necessary to do so ; but even then, when the 
cause we have to sustain is a bad one, it is good to talk 
nonsense. But the mathematician will never in real life 
reason better than others, because he is accustomed to 
abstract reasoning, to deducing the rectilinear consequences 
of an hypothesis, and is not accustomed to observing and 
connecting all the data of experience, nor to the induction, 
the guessing, and the appraising of probabilities. In private 
and public life, the mathematical spirit is the art of seeing 
only one side of the question. In mathematical science we 
make our own depositions ; in the world of reality experience 
furnishes us with definitions, and is ever transforming and 
correcting them by fresh determinations. We always find 



62 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

in results more than we had found in our definitions and 
principles. We had said, " Two and two make four ; " but 
we find five, and our narrow formulas are invaded by nature 
and life. 

Mathematics develop that kind of reasoning by signs, so 
happily termed by Leibnitz symbolic reasoning ; they 
replace objects by more or less conventional substitutes. 
It follows that they may give the habit of thinking by 
formulas, without taking into account the things themselves, 
the habit of retailing the results of reasoning without having 
gone through the process of reasoning. Leibnitz called this 
" psittacism." Algebraists look down on grammarians ; 
but they should not forget that if the latter have mainly to 
do with words, they themselves are taken up with signs, 
which are still further removed from intuitive reality. The 
mind is only exercised on quantities, not on qualities, and 
we may be able to solve problems in the differential calculus 
without being thereby any the wiser in our moral and 
social life. "We do not learn to draw the delicate lines of 
the human face by drawing straight lines, triangles, or 
squares ; what is wanted is the power of taking things in at 
a glance, and the artistic instinct. Similarly, the solution 
of scientific problems is not of the same order as that of a 
moral or literary problem. 

But the physical sciences ? some one will say. They lift 
us into the world of form ; they give to the youthful 
mind the depth it lacks ; they accustom the young to 
observe, to experiment, and to draw inferences. This is an 
optical illusion, as more than one philosopher has pointed 
out, from Herbart to Guyau. It is supposed that the 
teaching of science ex professo, as in classes at school, 
develops the same mental qualities that were necessary to 
great scientists in the construction and advancement of 
science ; but instruction even in natural and physical science 
chiefly develops the memory, and not the inductive reason- 
ing, and the spirit of speculation and hypothesis, which are 
the indispensable requisites for any discovery. Think how 



FAULTS IN OUR TEACHING OF SCIENCE. 63 

Pascal groped in the dark, recall the series of experiments 
and assumptions he had to make before he could prove that 
air had weight, — a series which began with Galileo and 
Torricelli. Is the natural science master of to-day making 
inductions, or observations, or hypotheses ? Nothing of the 
kind ; he does not make his pupils go through the inductive 
chain anew. He begins at the other end ; he lays down 
dogmatically the theory of the weight of the air, deduces the 
principal consequences, and finally gives the boys new 
deductions to draw, in the form of problems. There is no 
mental process going on in the boys analogous to that which 
was going on in Torricelli, Galileo, or Pascal. They are 
told— It has been proved that air has weight ; it has been 
proved that the earth revolves. Still, extraordinarily enough, 
they do te^ch them a little history apropos of these two 
important discoveries. That alone is worth all the theory 
taught, because it is 9f good example of the intellectual 
virtues without which discoveries cannot be made. The 
teaching of science ex cathedrd and science itself are so 
different as to be almost antithetic, just as the active is the 
opposite of the passive, and invention the opposite of 
memory. 

Now let us see at work this intellectual gymnastics to 
which young people, according to Spencer, Bain, Huxley, 
and their disciples in France, are subjected by the teaching 
of positive science. The chemistry-master enters the class- 
room; the subject of his lesson is chemical affinity. The 
boys take their pens and wait. " To explain the union of 
different simple bodies in the same composite molecule, we 
must admit the existence of a force which first of all attracts 
them one to the other, and then maintains the union thus 
effected. This force is called affinity y * The boy, know- 
ing nothing about this force which maintains the union of 
bodies, writes as rapidly as possible a simple "definition of 
words," which he is told to learn by heart. " We are going 

* A lesson taken down in shorthand at one of the great lyceums. 



64 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

to examine the cliaracteristics of affinity, and the principal 
causes that modify it." Boy writes : " Oharacteys, modifij- 
ing causesy Meanwhile, the master proceeds : " (1) Before 
affinity can be exercised between two bodies there must be 
contact. A very simple experiment will be enough to show 
us this." During the experiment the pen has a moment's 
rest. " This is an aqueous solution of baryta, and this is 
a rod dipped in H2SO4. Sulphuric acid and baryta have a 
strong tendency to combine and form a body known as baric 
sulphate." This is a new name to be engraved on the 
memory, " Now I bring the baryta as close as possible to 
the surface of the liquid, and you see that combination does 
not take place. Now I touch the solution of baryta. You 
see baric sulphate is produced immediately contact takes 
place. It takes the form of a white insoluble powder." 
The boys look on, and the only scientific effort, the only 
induction, the only experiment they have to make is the 
ascertaining the presence of a white powder at the end of the 
rod. Certainly, the experiment is an interesting and even 
an amusing one, but has it in the least initiated those boys 
into the method by which the beautiful laws of affinity 
were discovered, the philosophical inter-relation of forces, or 
their marvellous transformation one into the other ? Every 
chemical or physical experiment, however ingenious it may 
be, is laid down in every detail beforehand. It develops 
before absolutely passive spectators just as if it were merely 
a description. They will never be experimenters because 
they have seen a series of experiments. They will have 
seen a vacuum created in a pneumatic machine, they will 
have seen a heated ball unable to pass through the ring 
through which it easily slipped when cold, etc. That is all 
very good in its way, but teaching by watching experiments 
is not teaching by action, and our boys do not act at these 
lessons, they watch, make notes, and summarize. All it 
comes to is stringing together fugitive phrases caught at 
random. The mind is very little developed by this, even 
from the scientific point of view. 



FAULTS IN OUR TEACHING OF SCIENCE. 65 

But the course of Natural History ! There, at any rate, 
the boys learu to observe, get a knowledge of things, and 
(as it is more extended), according to M. Blanchard, a 
knowledge of " men." Here is another shorthand report : 
" After what I said in our last lesson of the role played by 
liquid nourishment in the animal economy and of the in- 
fluence of respiration on the physiological properties of these 
liquids, it is evident that they should be in perpetual motion, 
in order that every part of the body may receive the materia] 
necessary to its nutrition. This movement constitutes what 
physiologists call the circulation of the Moody Here we find 
the inductive and experimental method in the act of being 
transformed into the deductive and dogmatic method in 
science-teaching. Instead of telhng the boys by what 
prodigies of patience and intelligence the circulation of the 
blood was discovered, they are told — " it is evident that the 
blood must circulate, and, as a matter of fact, it does 
circulate." As a rule, the master limits himself to adding — 
" This phenomenon was unknown to the ancients ; its dis- 
covery is due to Harvey, physician to Charles I., King of 
England (1618)." Thus summed up, this fact — far more 
important than any battle that ever was fought — remains a 
lifeless detail, and simply a little more added to the burden 
on the memory. " In the higher animals, the circulation 
takes place in the interior of a very complicated piece of 
apparatus, composed' of — (1) A system of canals and 
membranous tubes," etc. Then follows a minute descrip- 
tion, assisted by anatomical drawings, and with none of the 
experiments which form the foundation of physics. The 
pupils look on and try to fix in their memories the names 
of the different arteries, of the veins, and their definitions. 
Here, again, the boys will have exercised no intellectual 
faculty but that of memory, which, while their hands were 
mechanically travelling over the paper, was no less mechani- 
cally inscribing', in the frontal convolutions of their brains, 
a certain number of facts and words. After that, certain 
scientific men will ridicule the lad who writes Latin prose 
1 



66 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

and Latin verse. There is no paradox, however, in 
maintaining that the study of grammar and literature is 
more adapted than the study of science to the development 
of a scientific spirit, i.e. the spirit of induction, research, 
divination, hypothesis, observation, experiment, ingenuity, 
and patience (the patience of a Newton). Yes, to analyze 
a phrase and thoroughly grasp its meaning, to translate 
one's o^vIl thoughts mto expressions accurately conveying 
their meaning — especially in an ancient language — induction, 
observation, experiment and test, divination, hypothesis, 
and speculation of every kind are necessary. This exercise 
will make you more like the inventors of the barometer or 
thermometer than if you are simply present in a class in 
which a thermometer is being made. All the notes a science 
student ever made go for next to nothing in communicating 
the spirit of scientific and speculative invention, compared 
with a translation, with a piece of prose, or even with Latin 
verses. The spu'it of insight is more necessary to the 
doctor, the naturalist, and the geometer than the spirit of 
geometry. Gladstone was reading Homer and writing 
Latin verses during his whole life at Eton ; he was barely 
taught the elements of arithmetic. Reverse the circum- 
stances, imagine him a profound arithmetician, but with no 
literary training. It is very doubtful if he ever would have 
become an incomparable financial minister. Claude Bernard 
began by writing plays and by ideal experiments on character 
before his experiments upon organisms. 

There is much exaggeration also in the habit of observa- 
tion that is supposed to be developed by the study of 
external objects. In France the elements of geology are 
taught to boys under twelve — "Silicious stones, rock 
crystal, flint, quarry-stone, sandstone, granite, the complex 
structure of granite, gravel, clay, limestone," etc. In the 
fifth (still under twelve)—" stratified and un stratified rocks, 
trilobites, fossil molluscs and fish, the Silurian formation, 
slate, Devonian formation, Pyrenean marbles, secondary 
formation, ammonites, belemnites, Triassic formation, rock- 



FAULTS IN OUR TP:ACH[XG OF SCIENCE. 67 

salt and gypsum, Jurassic formation, calcareous Oolites," et?. 
The best part of this programme is the excursions in the open 
air for which it serves as a pretext. But they do not lead to 
any better " observation of man," or appraising or controlling 
of character, because the nature of a formation has been 
ascertained, or a piece of quartz recognized, or a host of 
learned names committed to memory, or the number of 
petals of a flower counted, or even because botanical rambles 
have been made. The learning of external observation does 
not imply the learning of internal observation. A great 
naturalist may be the simplest of men and the simplest of 
psychologists. In fact it is almost always so. The observa- 
tion of animals is closely akin to the observation of human 
beings, but how can children be expected to become 
observers of animals, quite apart from the fact that animal 
is far more difficult than human psychology ? The study of 
natural history, which is the most passive of all from the 
purely descriptive and narrative character it assumes in our 
teaching, is knowledge rather than science ; it is either a 
mere exercise of the memory, or amusement and relaxation, 
or a study of practical utility ; on its poetic and philosophical 
side alone, with which our method of teaching does not, 
however, concern itself, has it any educative value. 

The third defect which science-teaching should avoid is 
what is called " specialization," which restricts each special 
science to its own domain, without linking it with others, 
and without eliciting the synthetic connection of the whole. 
As it exists at present, our teaching of various sciences, not 
only many in number but each isolated from the rest, is 
a second tower of Babel, added to that erected by the 
teachers of ancient and modern languages and of ancient 
and modern history ; each gives a course of lessons in an 
idiom of his own, and the result is eventually nothing but a 
series of specialities which is unfolded before the student. 
The fragmentary and disconnected knowledge which is thus 
given to our youth no longer possesses either scientific con- 
sistency or educative virtue. As our intellectual faculties 



68 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

aim at unity of principles, so our moral faculties aim at the 
unity of different ends in the good. If instruction is not 
reduced to a unity from Avhich springs a conception of the 
great laws of the world and of human society, it ipso facto 
neglects the ideal ends of hfe, and ceases to make science 
useful for conduct. With their supreme truth and beauty, 
the different sciences also lose their morality. They run 
the risk of favouring the same vicious tendency which is at 
present evident in literature and in art. Who is not struck 
in these days with what is called the " subjectivism " of men 
of letters, poets, artists, critics, each concerned mainly with 
his own ego, his own impressions, his own more or less 
narrow personahty ? This is the invasion of literature, 
poetry, and art by egoism. Do we want this intellectual 
egoism to penetrate further into science itself ? 

The lowering of the mental level consequent on extreme 
division of labour extends to those who are destined to 
enlighten and instruct others. As John Stuart Mill says : 
"A man's mind is as fatally narrowed, and his feelings 
towards the great ends of humanity as miserably stunted, by 
giving all his thoughts to the classification of a few insects, or 
the resolution of a few equations, as to sharpening the points 
or putting on the heads of pins." * " Specializing " is adapted 
to the disaggregration of all it affects ; it is the failing of 
too many savants, who, contrary to their true interests, 
betray a decided aversion to broad and philosophic views. 
The minute details with which they are perpetually occupied, 
the infinitely small wheels they turn in the great social 
mechanism, prevent them from grasping the sentiment of 
total unity, and the sentiment of their unity with their 
fellow-men ; but this sentiment constitutes " public spirit." 
Hence their work becomes "simply a tribute to material 
necessity," instead of being the "happy accomplishment of 
a social function." 

Oar system of education is no more in accord with the 

» J. S. Mill, " Auguste Comte and Positivism," p. 95 (Tr.). 



FAULTS IN OUR TEACHING OF SCIENCE. G9 

positive than with the idealistic conception. Anguste Comte 
tells us that, " the first and essential condition of intel- 
lectual and moral education should consist in its rigorous 
imiversalifi/." He expressly claims " an instruction capable 
of varied extension in a constantly identical and equal 
system." ISTow, according to Comte, the universal part of 
science is its spirit, its method, and its great results ; these, 
then, are the positive bases of scientific education. He 
also sees in specializing a most formidable and a very 
rapidly increasing evil which will retard our moral and. 
intellectual regeneration. "All the forces of society should 
be brought into play to combat this direction of the mind." 
And there is only one remedy — a broad, general, and really 
unified education which may serve as the common founda- 
tion of ulterior specializing. The evil exists even in 
Germany ; the illustrious Eector of the Academy at Berhn, 
M. Dubois-Eeymond, protests against the indusiricdism 
which is presented as the aim of scientific instruction. 
" Science, minus the philosophical spirit, narrows the mental 
field, and destroys the sense of the ideal." If science, on 
the one hand, issues in the progress of industry, it should 
tend, on the other hand, to the progress of the moral world. 
Moreover, wdiat is po.4tive science outside morality but a 
superior form of force, more dangerous perhaps than brute 
force, because it is more powerful, although it is, as has been 
Bai3, scarcely more worthy of respect ? 

A wider extension of scientific instruction into primary 
education has by no means raised the moral level ; the moral 
level has, on the contrary, been lowered. I do not say that 
the fault is due to the study of science, but it is certain 
that when science is separated from moral education, it 
develops in the child a certain vain presumption which 
ultimately tends to relegate him to the ranks of the unclassed. 
Besides, the tool with which it furnishes him is two-edged. 
AVe know that the criminal records of the early part of the 
century gave sixty-one per cent, of persons who had received 
no instiTiciijn. In the face of such a proportion, it was 



70 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

supposed that ignorance was tlie main cause of criminality, 
and the authorities set to work to extend primary instruc- 
tion. " Now that it is obligatory," says Guyao, " the propor- 
tion is simply reversed ; out of a hundred prisoners, seventy 
have received grammatical and scientific instruction, and 
thirty have not." * We also know that the number of 
crimes and offences committed by minors is increasing. It 
follows that the subjects of every kind with which our 
curricula are over-crowded are no substitute for a sound 
moral education. In secondary instruction, if science ulti- 
mately absorbs everything at the expense of literature and 
phDosophy, I am persuaded that in some form or other a 
general demoralization must ensue. 

* Guyau, "Education and Heredity," pp. 178, 179 (Tr.). 



CHAPTER ITT. 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL REFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, 
THEIR TRANSFORMATION INTO HUMANITIES 

Reform of scientific studies must keep a twofold end in 
view : simplification, unification ; and these are only possible 
by a philosophical organization of education, 

I. With what part of the tree of science must we 
familiarize the child ? The roots, the trunk, and the great 
branches ; do not make them count all the leaves. In the 
case of the young we must reduce everything to just what 
is essential \ the more the detailed study of science is re- 
duced, the more will the really scientific spirit be developed 
— that spirit which is the antithesis to diversity of applica- 
tion and to mechanical memory. If a Descartes were in 
these days to write another " Discourse on Method," how 
clearly he would demonstrate the profound inutility of most 
of the so-called scientific studies ! — their practical and 
pedagogic inutility, to say the least of it. What a magis- 
terial rending of programmes would there be, of programmes 
which seem to have no object but to deaden and, as would 
have been said in the time of Descartes, to astonish the 
mind ! 

What is the type of a bad scientific book ? The manual. 
Well, our so-called scientific— and let me add historical and 
geographical — instruction, tends nowadays to make the 
student into a living but mutilated and inaccurate text- 
book, full of blunders and confusion. That is too often 
the meaning of the diploma given after an examination. 
Teachers of science, as well as of history and geography, 



72 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

forget that excessive development of the memory is fatal 
to the other functions of the intellect. The cerebral powers, 
at each period of life, are limited, and we can only exact 
from them a certain total effort. Eobert Brown knew 
nearly twenty-five thousand names of vegetable species ; 
Kant, twenty thousand. When they wanted to learn new 
names, they forgot those they already knew. When a child's 
memory is overweighted in one direction it discharges its 
contents in another. 

" To learn science " is an empty phrase, for, as a matter 
of fact, science is not learned, it is created ; and Aristotle 
rightly asserted that in this connection knowledge is creation. 
Results alone may be the object of knowledge ! but results 
are only a table of contents, they are neither the book itself 
nor the spirit that dictated it. When we wish to make 
young people learn too many subjects, and even these too 
rapidly, we are overtasking their will and intellect, and we 
are giving them no leisure for reflection to grasp what they 
have done, or to prepare for fresh conquests. We are, 
therefore, fashioning brains adapted to the application of 
cufc-and-dried formulas; but we also are weakening the 
power of invention and decision. In a word, knowledge 
that is too extended and, ipso facto too superficial, will stifle 
the intellect and relax the character. Hence springs the 
"dearth of men" prophesied by Alexander de Humboldt 
half a century ago. We treat the brain as a passive piece 
of parchment on which is to be written in close lines the 
maximum quantity of geometry, physics, and natural history, 
etc. And this passivity tends to extend from the intellect 
to the character, from the individual to the race. The 
savants themselves are forced to confess with M. 0. Yogt, 
that, by the present style of science-teaching, "individual 
initiative is more and more lessened, and tends to become 
replaced by work of an ever more and more mechanical 
character." We are content with grinding equations in a 
mill w^hich works almost automatically ever since its inven- 
tion by Leibnitz and Descartes. 



FIIILOSOnilCAL REFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 73 

If a cataclysm in its destructive course were to destroy 
our civilization, and if, years after, one of the programmes 
of the baccalaureat were discovered under the ruins, we 
should be stupefied by the encyclopasdic science of our 
matriculants — 

Grandiaqne effossis mirahitur ossa sepulchris. 

We, their contemporaries, know the real value of these 
giants of science. The real intellectual dynamometer is the 
conception and realization of ideas which have become living- 
forces. One of the maxims of German pedagogy — and it 
was also a maxim in the pedagogy of the ancients — is that 
our knoAvledge is not ours until it is converted into a 
faculty and into an instinct. 

Wil] any one assert that this heavy technical apparatus 
is necessary to artisans, engineers, doctors, officers in the 
army, etc. ? If we look at things a little closer, we may be 
able to convince him that this is an illusion. Every career 
requires the knowledge of a good many special subjects, 
and of a few general subjects. The special knowledge is 
acquired by immediate preparation for the profession, and 
chiefly by practice in that profession, which puts our 
opponents, in the popular phrase, " in a fix." As for general 
scientific knowledge, it need not be so extensive ; to know 
what is absolutely necessary, and to know it thoroughly, is 
all that is wanted. The founders of the Ecole Polytechnique, 
says Biot, " men accustomed to general ideas, whose minds 
had been elevated and whose views had been widened by 
the Revolution, . . . knew that the science of a good 
engineer is composed of general notions, common to all the 
professions, of practical details which are proper to each. 
x\mong the former and in the first rank are higher mathe- 
matics, which give mental grasp and sagacity. Then come 
the principal theories in Chemistry and Physics." * If it 
is good for my intellectual education to learn the formulas 
NO, NOo, NO.3, NO4, NO5, it is only as an example of 

* Biot, "Histoire des Sciences," p. 59. 



74 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

the marvellous structure, the regular combinations, and the 
union of atoms. 

Practically, when I want, for the purposes of any trade, a 
thorough knowledge of chemical formulas, I shall only have 
to study them in a good text-book, and I shall have no 
occasion to draw upon my schoolboy reminiscences. It is 
considered logical to teach young people at school the 
science they will afterwards require in their professions ; 
for instance, natural science and physiology to our future 
doctors. The contrary principle would be more logical. A 
medical student can only really learn anatomy and physi- 
ology in the lecture and dissecting rooms, and he will have 
plenty of time for that. What is the use of giving him at 
school a superficial acquaintance with what he will be 
obliged to learn all over again ? It is far better to teach the 
young what they will in later years have no opportunity of 
learning, and what they will not be compelled to learn. 
The doctor that is to be has far more need of a sound 
knowledge of mathematics and physics, of literature and 
philosophy, than of natural history ; he wants everything 
that will give him an upright and elevated mind ; he 
wants a little idealism before he becomes acquainted with 
the miseries of human life, and the mysteries of death. 
Utilitarian teachitig, which makes the special profession of 
far too much importance, defeats its own end, and far from 
making men more apt for their profession, it leaves them 
mentally imperfect and mutilated. From a liberal educa- 
tion we must exclude all over-particularizing and all over- 
specializing ; our first aim is to make men, and men 
endowed with great social virtues, not to turn out ready- 
made engineers, mechanics, doctors, or apothecaries. 
Speciality can only come after a sure and permanent acqui- 
sition of the general subjects of knowledge, the useful must 
not precede the true and the beautiful. 

At any rate we should be inspired by those principles in 
the choice of the sciences to be taught to a student taking 
up literatm-e. Astronomy, for example, is less practical, 



PIIILOSOPIIIOAL REFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 75 

less applicable to industry than chemistry, but it is also 
more adapted to excite admiration and to open out a wide 
perspective of the cosmos ; it should, therefore, have a place 
in the programme of a liberal and mainly literary education. 
But, as a matter of fact, the French, after having not long 
since introduced cosmography into the literary curriculum, 
are on the point of suppressing it. In the new programmes * 
all the sciences but cosmography appear in single file, and a 
student of literature might, strictly speaking, reach the end 
of his studies without knowing the difference between a 
planet and a star, or without knowing what a nebula is.f 
This sudden suppression of a science by a stroke of the pen 
is a proof of the problematic character of the supposed 
" necessity " of science in education ; yesterday you might 
hive a wxll-informed mind although you know no 
astronomy ; to-day you must know chemistry and geology 
instead. No doubt this is because it has been discovered 
that chemistry and geology are " more useful " for the 
purpose of forming " tellurians." 

As for me, I should prefer that they turned out " cosmo- 
politans ; " that the child's gaze should sometimes be 
directed to the star-strewn heavens ; that it should be shown 
Sirius, Arcturus, Aldebaran ; that its thoughts should be 
guided through the infinities by the rays of the stars, rays 
that bring the future closer before us, and unveil the coming 
years to man ; that it should catch a glimpse in the white 
mist of the Pleiades, or in the Milky Way, of a dust of 
worlds, and in the other nebulae — of worlds perhaps yet in 
process of formation. If, in addition to this, it is told how 
human science succeeded in penetrating the secret of these 
clouds of stars, if it is told about Pythagoras, Plato, and 
Aristotle, of Scipio's dream, of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, 
Descartes, and Xewton, condensing all the movements of 

* Vide " Proposals of Commission in 1890." 

t It is true that if he eventually marries a student from the girls' 
lyceuras, she will be able to teach him cosmography, to which her master 
will have devoted an hour a week. 



76 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

the earth into one formula, which we might wilte in the 
hollow of our hand ; if we go beyond astronomical systems 
and introduce it to the philosophical systems of the cosmos ; 
if it is told that the skies have ever been the object of the 
meditation of the wise ; that all have found in what an abyss 
of final ignorance our science is lost, and how the compass 
of thought multiplies our " points of contact with the un- 
known," as the luminous sphere of our knowledge widens ; if 
we add that the laws of immbers which rule the world, and 
make all movement intelligible, are not self-explanatory ; 
that as most wise men have felt, these laws should have 
their explanation in something analogous to our intellect, 
in a something present within every being, or at least in a 
universal effort, a universal aspiration which no doubt is 
striving to expand within the depths of our hearts and to 
become self-conscious within our thought ; that in any case, 
brute, lifeless matter arranged in infinitely varied figures 
could account for all, because there are beings who live and 
feel and think ; if, in a word, the teacher of cosmography 
did not consider himself exclusively as a functionary of the 
State, who, for a fair salary, has to teach from eight in the 
morning to two in the afternoon, that the radius vector of 
the planets sweeps out areas proportional to the time ; if he 
looked upon himself as an educator of youth — yes, even he ; 
if he were persuaded that a certain idealism is necessary to 
education, and that we can at any time come into conflict 
with things of the earth, earthy ; if he went so far as to 
tell his pupils, with Kant, that two marvels will ever fill 
man with admkation, the sky above our heads with its laws, 
and the moral law in our hearts — and that, perhaps, at 
bottom, these laws are identical, forming a single law which 
is obscure in the bright light of heaven, and dazzling in the 
dark depths of our consciousness ; — this disinterested con- 
templation of visible and invisible infinities would seem to 
me of greater value than a practical acquaintance with 
slate, sandstone, or gypsum. He is no man who has never 
felt the " sacred horror " of Lucan beneath the vault of 



PHILOSOPHICAL REFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 77 

mighty oaks in druidical forests, a ** sacred horror" still 
more impressive in the forest of stars beneath the vault of 
heaven.* 

Even in chemistry, in my opinion, we must only teach — 
at any rate to literary students — what is necessary to all, 
what is beautiful and admirable what is a revelation of 
the elementary architecture of bodies, or the universal 
affinity, the existence of which throughout space is revealed 
by spectrum analysis. Here are two programmes in 
chemistry ; the one passes in review the whole series of 
elements and of their principal combinations, and describes 
the preparations of sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, nitric 
acid, etc. ; the other, after a rapid historical sketch of 
alchemy and chemistry, requires an examination of prin- 
ciples, of the connection between chemistry and physics and 
physiology, notions on chemical atoms and their structure, 
the relative or absolute simplicity of metals and metalloids, 
analysis and synthesis in chemistry, the Umits and possible 
progress of our present knowledge in this domain, the 
impassable boundaries of the mechanics of atoms ; added to 
this are the principal laws of the combinations of bodies, 
great discoveries such as that of spectrum analysis, their 
theoretical and practical and even social consequences, the 
revolutions effected in industry by these discoveries — in a 
word, openings and perspectives extending in every direction 
far beyond the descriptions of metals, acids, or salts. Of 
the two programmes, which would be the more interesting, 
and therefore the more easy for young students ? General 
views remain in the memory with less effort than multi- 
plicity of detail. 

At the same time, which will be the more fruitful and 
educative course ? To appreciate this point, a simple test 
is at hand, to which we should always have recourse when 
it is a matter of judging a syllabus. Suppose the pupil at 

* After these pages were published in the Hevue des Deux Mondes, 
the study of Cosmography was replaced in the programme for students 
between sixteen and seventeen. 



78 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

the end of his course forgets all the substance of what he 
has learned (which in this case is nine times out of ten) ; 
what will be left to him of the former programmes ? 
Nothing, or next to nothing. "What will he remember of 
the latter ? The whole spirit of chemical study, ineffaceable 
impressions, general elevation of thought ; and finally a 
curiosity and a longing to satisfy it when opportunity arises, 
a respect for and a love of science. All formulas and 
nomenclature will be more or less gone, but a progress of 
thought will remain and persist, and finally a scientific 
aptitude quite ready to manifest itself if circumstances 
compel the youth to learn anew, and this time to retain the 
science of which he has forgotten the letter and kept the 
spirit. "We may therefore say that chemistry, interpreted in 
a certain way and taught by a certain method, becomes a 
moral and even social science instead of being purely 
material ; it becomes a Immane science instead of being the 
knowledge of brute objects ; and it is thus alone that it, with 
all other sciences treated in the same way, can take its 
legitimate rank in the " humanities." The highest aim of 
liberal education is to excite admiration ; nothing, except it 
be absolutely necessary, should be taught to humanists if it 
is not admirable : TroXvixadia voov ov SiSda-Kei. 

Now what are the necessary sciences ? Some sciences are 
capable of explanation, others are not at all, and others but 
imperfectly so. Thus mathematics and mechanics are 
perfectly explanatory ; their analysis and synthesis reach as far 
as possible and give the sentiment of the inevitable, for what 
cannot be, is not. Effect is connected with cause and 
everything is luminous, transparent to the mind. Physics 
also may in a great measure be explained ; there are complete 
theories — such as the theory of dew — which communicate 
the sense of necessity. With chemistry we begin to have no 
explanations. Why do oxygen and hydrogen in chemical 
combination make water, and how ? We do not know, 
nor can we from the properties of the ingredients deduce 
the properties of the compound. We state the phenomenon 



rHILOSOnilCAL HEFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 79 

by saying so and so is the case, or we produce it and say so 
and so is going to ha^ipen, you will see the hydrogen and 
oxygen combine and form water. " In chemistry," says 
M. Berthelot, "our power goes further than our knowledge." 
The other branches of natural science again are much less 
susceptible of explanation ; life is still a mystery. To 
ascertain is not to explain. If we open a germinating grain 
of corn and totally destroy it, we are not grasping the great 
law of life, the secret of universal germination. The very 
functions of life can only be imperfectly explained. Why 
has the brain two hemispheres, and why is it constructed as 
it is ? Why has this flower five petals and not six ? Why 
has this soil one composition and not another ? Here there 
is more and more of statement, descri^otion, relation. The 
really scientific part of natural history is beyond the scope 
of secondary education ; the descriptive part is either too 
elementary or quite useless. Nature turns her kaleidoscope 
before us : we are content to note the figures as they 
succeed one to the other, an eglantine after a violet or a 
primrose, a lion after a tiger or an elephant. 

But what is the use of giving the young a description of 
*^ games of love and chance " ? We must say enough to 
awaken their imagination, to arouse admiration and 
curiosity ; the rest is superfluous, being at bottom neither 
scientific nor philosophical. Education, therefore, as a pro- 
found and methodic study, needs only two typical sciences, 
the methods of which are equally typical, the one deductive, 
the other inductive— mathematics and physics. These are 
almost the only sciences which give opportunity for problems 
as well as note-taking, and consequently afford a mental 
exercise in their solutions. If it is true that practice 
makes perfect, the scientific spirit will not be acquired in 
sciences which leave the pupil nothing to find out or do for 
himself. It is to be regretted that in physics, experiments 
are not carried out by the boys themselves ; but in spite of 
this, physics, the inductive science, jjar excellence, is the 
necessary complement of the deductive science — mathematics. 



80 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

Again, even in mathematics and physics, we must confine 
ourselves to the fundamental principles and have them 
thoroughly learned. In Latin, after the three hundredth 
piece of translation, the pupil will certainly have had his 
mind more exercised than after the ninth ; from Cornelius 
Nepos or Sallust, he will have gone on to Tacitus and 
Yirgil ; he will have solved a series of problems consisting in 
the discovery and expression of the thoughts of great writers ; 
and he will have a wider knowledge of both Latin and 
French. But will a boy be more intelligent after his three 
hundredth theorem in geometiy ? Will his mind undergo 
a metamorphosis because he has proceeded to the ellipse after 
he has studied the circle ? Will he be a different man because 
he has mastered simple equations and gone on to equations 
of the second degree ? No, for, strictly speaking, from one 
theorem to another it is always the same. And will there 
be any intellectual progress in passing in chemistry from 
sulphur to iodine ? or in botany, if we study the rubiace^ 
and afterwards learn the characteristics of the primulace^e ? 
or if, after examining pieces of quartz, we go on to pieces 
of chalk ? 

The fact is that science-teaching, with its list of facts and 
laws linked together by no philosophical connection, only 
apparently causes mental progress ; in reality the pupil is 
" marking time " on the same spot. It is just as if after 
having quoted a single instance of something, we were to 
proceed to give a thousand. This is not the case with moral 
science. If after having studied the laws of the sensibiUties 
and of the passions we go on to those of the will and of the 
intellect ; if we pass from logic to morals ; if we raise 
ourselves to considerations on the nature and worth of 
existence, it is clear that we are not only advancing but 
ascending. If in political economy we study the laws of 
production and then the laws of exchange, we obviously 
shall have a more complete idea of the sources of wealth ; if 
in politics after investigating the dangers and advantages 
of a monarchy, we turn to the dangers and advantages 



PHILOSOPHICAL REFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 81 

of democracy, we shall find our minds more accurately 
orientated than before. If in a3sthetics we turn from the 
strength and weakness of idealism to the strength and 
weakness of realism, from different styles of poetry to the 
plastic arts and to music, we shall certainly find our taste 
more enlightened and our ideas broader. The moral and 
social sciences are a perpetual ascent ; this is not so with 
mathematical and physical sciences unless they are studied 
on their philosophical, moral, and social side. 

The school of Comte has based its pedagogy on the 
division of science adopted by their master — general and 
special sciences, for instance. General physics as opposed to 
meteorology, comparative anatomy as opposed to descriptive 
natural history. The number of the general sciences is 
infinitely less than that of the special sciences ; and further, 
they also have that invaluable property for teaching pur- 
poses (as Comte tells) of condensation as far as is necessary, 
without a consequent losing sight of their double character 
of precision and generality. A few pages are enough for a 
clear and practical explanation of the acquired doctrines con- 
stituting " the higher expression and ultimate hmit of human 
knowledge. This principle is a true one, and that is why 
our scientific teaching, instead of being swamped in the 
descriptive sciences — mere fugitive exercises of the memory 
— should keep to the general theory of science, illustrated 
by a few well-chosen applications. 

II. Xot only should the study of science be simplified on 
the lines I have now laid do\vn, but it should be unified. 
The means is at hand, and forces itself upon our notice ; the 
connecting link of the various sciences can only be philosophy. 
Two things are necessary. First, we must introduce into 
the study of each science the philosophic spirit and method, 
general views, the search for the most general principles 
and conclusions ; we must then reduce the different sciences 
to unity by a sound training in philosophy which will be as 
obligatory to students in science as to students in literature. 



82 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

The young only follow their master when they see the end 
in view and outlets issuing therefrom ; if we cannot and 
ought not to make them see the practical application of each 
truth, we must make them see, so to speak, its theoretical 
application, i.e. its place and importance in the system of 
human knowledge. Science can only be thoroughly taught 
to the young by men of philosophical temperament, who 
will always see the part in the whole, and who will never 
lose sight of the hierarchy of truths. 

First we must show the human side of science, the part 
played by the mind in its construction and in its discoveries ; 
i.e. the method of each science, which is an application of 
general logic, should be the object of individual and attentive 
study. Moreover, the logic would not be entirely abstract, 
for it may be accompanied by the great examples afforded 
by the history of science. Scientific truths, said Descartes, 
are battles won ; describe to the young the principal and 
most heroic of these battles ; you will thus interest them 
in the results of science, and you will develop in them a 
scientific spirit by means of the enthusiasm for the con- 
quest of truth ; you will make them see the power of 
the reasoning which has led to discoveries in the past, 
and which will do so again in the future. How 
interesting arithmetic and geometry might be if we gave a 
short history of their principal theorems, if the child were 
mentally present at the labours of a Pythagoras, a Plato, a 
Euclid, or in modern times of a Yiete, a Descartes, a Pascal, 
or a Leibnitz ! Great theories, instead of being lifeless and 
anonymous abstractions, would become human, living truths, 
each with its own history, like a statue by Michael Angelo, 
or like a painting by Eaphael. 

At the same time, each scientific truth would have its 
morality. " Believe me," says Tyndall, " a self-renunciation 
which has something noble in it, and of which the world 
never hears, is often enacted in the private experience of 
the true votary of science." " Science," says Huxley, in his 
turn, " prospers exactly in proportion as it is rehgious ; . . . 



PIIILOSOnilCAL REFORM OF SCIENTIB^IC STUDIES. 83 

Truth has yielded herself rather to their patience, their love, 
their single-heartedness, and their self-denial, than to their 
logical acumen." Lastly, in Spencer's words, " Devotion to 
science is a tacit worship ; ... it is not a mere professed 
respect, but a respect proved by the sacrifice of time, thought, 
and labour." 

This could not be better expressed, but here the writer 
is dealing with active discovery, and not with passively 
transmitted truth. Yes, the development of science and the 
progress of method is an epic, and it is far more important 
for the education of the young to be interested in this epic 
than to make them enumerate and write out lists of facts or 
laws. Science has an intrinsic poetry of its own ; a Goethe, 
at once philosopher and poet, has no difficulty in finding 
this out, but our scientific instruction neglects to make 
understood and felt the poetry of science, which is blended 
with its very logic and with its history. 

Besides the human and logical side of science we should 
exhibit its general and cosmological features. For that 
purpose, we must systematize the great results of different 
sciences, and make their connection clear. The really 
scientific part of science is the inter-connection of causes, 
and at the same this is its beautiful, its interesting, and its 
educative side. The history of the objects, the causes of 
which we see linked together, becomes a fragment of the 
history of the world, and ipso facto of our own liistory, 
because we are a part of the great whole — the intelligent 
part, namely, that which understands the causes. The 
individual mind is only satisfied by the connection of 
things with the universal, that is what gives it its grandeur, 
and this ideal link we may hope to seize with the mental 
eyes. Who will be so indifferent as to be uninterested in 
the cosmic system ? That is where the real liberal value of 
scientific studies lies ; they should give us an idea of the 
universe and of its great laws, of what the ancients called 
the cosmos. The part played in the universe by numbei-s, 
by geometrical forms, by motion, is as interesting to the 



84 EDUOATIOK FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

mind as the particular study of a theorem in arithmetic 
and geometry is dull. If you are not continually widening 
the mental horizon of your boys, wha;t interest can they 
take in the extraction of a square root or in a tangent to 
a circle ? We must " Pythagorize," in the best sense of 
the word, and " Platonize ; " we must reveal to them 
the elementary sssthetics in numbers and figures ; we must 
show them how numbers rule the world, and how figures in 
space unveil to us the universal plan. In a word, we must 
show them both the human mind and the universe ; apart 
from these two terms a scientific truth loses its interest 
and its scope ; it can only have a practical and industrial 
interest. 

III. In the first "cycle" of education, which is still 
almost primary, the descriptive natural sciences have their 
place. In the second cycle, which is expressly secondary, 
the typical sciences must be taught, and they are two. — 
mathematics and physics. They are the only essential 
sciences and the basis of all the others. Chemistry already 
is, in a great measure, superfluous. Botany is scarcely any 
use, and geology even less ; zoology should only reappear in 
the third cycle, which is semi-superior. At this stage 
general Uology must be taught, the general laws of life and 
its evolution must be learned. In a word, the education in 
the natural sciences is either primary or higher ; it is not 
properly secondary at all, or, at least, only its general 
theories and philosophical conclusions enter into secondary 
education. Every boy who has received a sound education 
in mathematics and physics possesses the instrument necessary 
for the study of science ; the rest is only a matter of time, 
memory, and practice. Correct it also by Latin and his 
native literature, by a sound training in philosophy, by 
general notions of history, and you will secm^e the selection 
and development of scientific minds, and that by precisely 
the same means employed in the selection of literary minds. 
To mathematicians with a hterary and philosophical training 



PHILOSOPHICAL KEFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 85 

the rest of the sciences, with their technical apphcations, will 
offer no serious difficulty. 

In France we are too much enamoured of uniformity — a 
false conception of unity — and we cannot in secondary 
education distinguish the immovable foundations — true 
humanities — from that which varies with the individual 
aptitude. For my own part, I should prefer iinrelenting 
severity as far as the common foundations of classical educa- 
tion are concerned : the mother tongue, Latin, morals and 
philosophy, the history of civilization, the elements of mathe- 
matics and physics ; and tolerant and flexible regulations 
with regard to Greek, modern languages, details of history, 
and details of geology, chemistry, cosmography, zoology, 
geography, etc. Do not ask parents to devote their children 
to a special career before they are thirteen years of age. 
Simply ask them if they want their children to be at their 
studies to nineteen, or even, in higher education, to twenty- 
one. It has been said that this is " the only question within 
the reach of all, and the parents alone are able to solve it." 
Then we might organize a unique system of secondary 
education with ramifications, final but simple, and determined 
by the aptitudes and by the tastes which have already shown 
themselves in the course of studies, by the forecast, as it 
were, of the future career. We might leave, in the last 
years of school-life, a certain latitude in the choice of special 
courses, joined to inexorable rules with regard to common 
and essential courses. If a pupil has in view the higher 
technical schools, he will only have to improve his scientific 
training by the choice of an appropriate course. He will 
do less Greek, less history and geography ; he will not follow 
a course of literature, etc., but he will continue his work in 
Latin, his mother tongue, and philosophy. Although pre- 
pared for, say, an engineering school, he will, in fact, be 
none the less adapted for any liberal profession. With his 
Latin, the literature of his own country, philosophy, and 
the theory of science, he may become, with the proper com- 
plement of special study, a good magistrate or a good 



86 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

engineer, a good teacher or a good officer. His mental 
horizon will not have been narrowed down by the servile 
fashion of learning science, which is the preliminary 
" cookery " for our State schools. Would these schools lose 
if they were filled with men whose minds are really cultivated, 
complete, conversant with all that is great and noble in the 
mind, able to write good English or French, and in touch 
with most Hterary, moral, social, and philosophical questions ? 
In a word, strengthen the position of science by restricting 
it to what is fundamental for all, strengthen in the same 
way and by the same means the study of English and Latin 
literature, of general history, and of philosophy ; give boys 
in their last years of school-life the choice between going on 
with their Greek or the study of a special branch of science ; 
this would be the shortest way of maintaining the funda- 
mental unity of secondary education ; the same sap would 
nourish the whole tree, and the highest branches alone would 
be treated differently. This would produce a real equivalence 
between a literary and a scientific matriculant, from the 
point of view of moral and intellectual culture. 

In France, teachers of science, whether elementary or a 
special branch, are perforce compelled to undertake the work 
of " coaches " when they should be educators. They do not 
teach science, they teach how to pass examinations, with the 
aid of all the petty traditions for that purpose. Thus pupils 
and professors alike are condemned to a vulgar utilitarianism. 
The different State schools have a false idea of really scientific 
education, for they take as their criterion quantity rather 
than quality. As Yauvenargues said, "we must not judge 
men by what they do not know, but by what they do know 
and how they know it." The justification given of these 
long programmes is not that all these subjects are necessary, 
but that the requirements must be multiplied so as to select 
the most capable men, and to eliminate the rest. 

Xow, these long programmes actually test nothing but the 
memory, and are no real test of capacity. Can there be 
anything more illogical, not to say more immoral, than to 



PHILOSOPHICAL REFOllM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 87 

repliicc the appreciation of solid merit and good work by the 
machinery of a lottery ? If yoii want selection because of 
the numbers of your candidates, an easy way is within reach 
— examine them in letters and philosophy. You may get 
candidates knowing less chemistry and physics, but you will 
certainly get men who will in the long run do you far more 
credit than men whose culture is less complete. In great 
schools, as elsewhere, "heads well made are better than 
heads well filled." 

ly. It is not enough for the teaching of science to be 
animated by a philosophical spirit; it must have its com- 
plement, and, in a measure, its counterpoise, in a sound 
training in philosophy. 

Secondary instruction has two main aims ; it must, in the 
first place, furnish those who will not pursue their studies 
after school-life with a culture that is sufhcient for the 
functions of private life, the family, and the State ; in the 
second place, it must give to others the knowledge that is 
necessary for them to profit by higher instruction. Now, 
philosophy is essential for the introduction of unity among 
the different branches of science, among the different 
branches of literature, and finally, between science and 
literature, between natural laws and social and historical 
laws. From this unity alone springs a scientific conception 
of the world and a higher rule of conduct for those who do 
not pursue their studies further. Secondary education must 
make towards a philosophy of nature, and a moral and social 
philosophy. Without these it remains anarchic, divorced 
from its principles, from its consequences, from its aims ; 
it is analysis without synthesis, or, as Aristotle would say, 
a bad drama made up of episodes. Philosophy is therefore 
essential to all Avho have to be contented with secondary 
instruction ; they must carry away from their studies general 
conclusions as to nature, and the laws and ends of individual 
or collective existence. Moreover, moral and social science 
is the only science that is of itself educative, because it 



88 EDUCATION FltOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

furnishes our highest faculties with both exercise and 
nourishment ; all other science should, therefore, tend 
towards it. By the simple word science the French, says 
Dubois-Eeymond, understand the sciences of nature {Natur- 
ivissenschaft\ and by the simple word Wissenschaft the 
G-ermans understand mental science {Geistesivissenschaft). 

Besides, philosophy is the only training in which the 
pupil is active as long as he is listening to his master, 
instead of becoming a " mechanical notebook." We cannot 
thoroughly learn psychology, logic, or ethics without under- 
standing them ; we cannot understand them without in a 
measure re-constructing or re-thinking them, without self- 
reflection and continual mastery in our consciousness of the 
words of the teacher ; instead of being passively present at 
a material experiment, as in a lecture on physics, or listening 
to a description of anatomical pictures, as in a course of 
natural history, the student of philosophy is continually 
compelled to refer to his inmost experience, to his personal 
recollections, to what he has seen, heard, or felt. The master, 
too, questions him in the maieutic method of Socrates. 
According to D'Alembert, two things are necessary to 
acquire sagacity, the best of mental qualities — " self -exercise 
by rigorous demonstrations, and not to confine one's self to it.'''' 
We must first accustom ourselves to the recognition of the 
truth in all its purity, to be able to afterwards distinguish 
it from what is more or less near it ; but it is to be feared 
that "the too vigorous and continuous habit of absolute 
and rigid truth dulls the sense of what is not truth." 
Ordinary eyes, habituated to brilliant light, no longer are 
able to distinguish the gradations of a weaker hght, and 
only see thick darkness where others catch a glimpse of faint 
brightness. Hence the contempt of certain savants for 
philosophers. However, " the mind which only recognizes 
the truth when it is directly affected by it, is far below that 
which not only recognizes it when close at hand, but can 
detect it at a distance by its fugitive characteristics." We 
must, therefore, accustom ourselves to passing without diffi- , 



rHILOSOPHICAL KEFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 89 

culfcy from light to dusk. In moral and social life we are 
dealing with the uncertain; what is, in my opinion, im- 
portant, is, therefore, not so much the acquisition of know- 
ledge, as the art of divination, the sense of the beautiful, of 
the good, of the " becoming." Every education leaving this 
sense undeveloped may perhaps turn out artisans, but it 
certainly will never make men and citizens. 

On the other hand, philosophy is no less necessary to 
those who will eventually receive a higher training. In fact, 
higher education in itself is a specialization — law, medicine, 
science, history, literature, philology, theology. All students 
in the higher courses are not compelled to follow a course of 
pihilosophy ; and, besides, philosophy in higher education 
can no louger take the form of a regular and complete 
course ; it itself specializes ; and to be fruitfully pursued, 
the study of the particular question specialized needs a 
preliminary acquaintance with the whole field of philosophy. 
To count on higher education to initiate young minds into 
philosophy is, therefore, a mere chimera. And, further, 
young men who proceed to higher work without a pre- 
liminary philosophical training are unable to use to the best 
advantage the instruction given them. They have no 
criterion, no general views, no way of combining and co- 
ordinating their special studies into a conception of the 
world, of life, and of society. Their so-called higher work 
will really remain inferior work ; they will be workmen in 
f)hysics, chemistry, history, literature, etc. ; but they will not 
have that elevated, disinterested, liberal, and universal spirit 
which should be the spirit of the universities. 

Men of science more than any others should know the 
limits of science. They are led, in fact, either to step over 
the bounds of knowledge in their assertions, or to introduce 
into science itself metaphysical hypotheses. Science tends 
to become, as it were, a new divinity, whose prophets are the 
savants, and whose worship has its fanatics. Kant in- 
augurated the era of our modern philosophy by criticizing 
our means of knowledge, and by laying down the boundaries 



90 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

beyond which knowledge cannot pass ; alte terminus hcerens. 
The principal German scientists are saturated with the 
critical spirit, and in their writings they are fond of showing- 
ns where our knowledge must stop. The magnificent 
addresses of Dnbois-Reymond on the limits of natural 
knowledge and on the seven enigmas of the world will occur 
to the reader, with those of Yirchow, Haeckel, and ISTaegeli 
on kindred topics. In England, Tyndall's address on the 
limits of science has become a classic. Do not leave the 
young to the exclusive study of science, and to the pride this 
study may develop, without showing them the points on 
which we must say with the modesty of Socrates of old, 
" What we do know is that we know nothing." One of two 
things befalls all men of science who have received no 
philosophical culture ; they either remain in an attitude of 
complete indifference and positivist scepticism, or they 
fashion a more or less novel philosophy for themselves. 
The lucubrations of more than one old pupil of the Ecole 
Polytechnique show us that the geometrical spirit is far from 
excluding the spirit of chimera.* The young man must 
therefore receive from philosophy an explanation of the 
facts of science already known to him, a rule for higher 
scientific research, and finally a view of the limits beyond 
which scientific knowledge cannot pass, and beyond which 
lies the realm of belief. 

Philosophy was not long since suppressed in France for 
the sake of those boys who were preparing for a scientific 
career, or for the great schools. Now these are precisely the 
lads who have most need of philosophy, for, as we have 
seen, moral and esthetic culture is especially necessary to 
our future savants. 

To sum up, — the teaching of science should be organized 
with a view to general culture, and so as to form by itself a 
real system of humanities. At the same time, it should 
secure the selection of scientific capacities, and thus prepare 

* Victor Considerant, to quote only one instance. 



PHILOSOPHICAL REFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 91 

for the nation the elite of scientific men it needs. To attain 
this twofold object, it is not the quantity of knowledge 
acquired that is to be considered — and that is the blunder 
committed by those who have drawn up the various pro- 
grammes for examinations. The important thing is the 
quaHty, the method, and the organization of knowledge. 
The quality of knowledge consists in its being rational 
instead of being mechanical and merely mnemotechnical ; 
the method must be active and philosophical ; the organiza- 
tion must tend towards a philosophy of nature and a 
philosophy of manners. Yogt tells a story of the clock- 
maker of Strasbourg. The town council, fearing lest the 
great constructor of this chef d'cauvre should make a still 
more wonderful clock for some other city, determined to put 
out his eyes. He asked as a last favour to be allowed to 
see and to touch his clock once more. He went up to it 
and took out a little " collar." Then the savage deed was 
done. But the clock would not go ; its wheels revolved all 
right, but they had been thrown out of gear. The study of 
science without philosophy produces a similar effect on the 
brain ; the cerebral wheels turn round each in its proper 
place, but they are out of gear, and the hand does not mark 
the hour. All unity has disappeared ; it is a machine the 
easier to put out of order the more complicated it is. The 
little collar which would keep everything in its proper 
direction is missing, and the so-called scientific education 
becomes intellectual infatuation. True education should 
form an organism, animated throughout by the same spirit, 
regulated by the same method, tending to the same end. 
The different sciences should be taught not for themselves, 
but for the whole of which they form a part, for science. 
They should therefore be linked together instead of following 
one another in the disorderly sequence of a modern syllabus, 
and their connection should be of such a character as to 
ensure the progressive development of a conception of nature 
and life. They should, in spite of the diversity of their 
objects, exhibit in process the only and identical evolution 



92 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

of things and men. The same gymnastics are necessaiy for 
a man whether destined for a literary or for a scientific 
career ; the thought of a genius and the thought of nature 
with its universal attraction need, to be thoroughly under- 
stood, a similar development of the intellect, a similar 
faculty of divination. The philosophic spirit alone can 
animate mathematics or physics ; it will give them an 
object, a direction, and a value quite different from the 
"value of commercial application" which alone affects an 
Edison. The student poring over chemical or mechanical 
formulas will no longer be heard saying, "What does it 
matter to me ? I am not to be a chemist or an engineer." 
With that portion of universal and, in a measure, cosmical 
truth exhibited by the philosopher in the partial laws and in 
,the particular theories of science, is disclosed that portion of 
eternal beauty contained in these laws and theorems : they 
are illumined by a ray from the infinite. 

The power of philosophic influence is the supreme 
criterion of the intellectual and scientific vitality of a race ; 
of this, Greece, France in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries, Germany in the nineteenth, are the most effective 
proofs. The scientific hegemony has never been and never 
will be with an unlettered and unphilosophic nation ; the 
progress of science is in inverse ratio to that of a mechanical 
and utilitarian teaching of science, while it is in direct 
ratio to the progress of literary and philosophical culture. 
The same may be said of the political hegemony. Not only 
have we seen German generals triumph over French armies, 
but we have also seen the triumph of the speculative 
geniuses of Germany, of those who during the last century 
have given an impetus to German literature, philosophy, 
and science, and i2)so facto to " public spirit ; " we have 
been defeated by Kant and Fichte, by Goethe and Schiller, 
by Alexander and William de Humboldt, by Gauss and 
Helmholtz, as well as by Bismarck and Moltke. 

French savants in the last century were great theorists ; 
when the defence of the country called for it they became 



rHILOSOPHICAL REFORM OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES. 93 

preafc practicians, and were able to provide almost at once, 
armies, soldiers' clothes and munitions of war. Cloueb 
invented a process for turning iron into cast steel ; Yander- 
monde manufactured powder ; BerthoUet coined money ; 
I)e la Rochelle made arms, Guyton-Morveau tempered the 
blades of sabres, and with Coutelle and Conte he constructed 
balloons and directed companies of aeronauts. Ohappe 
organized the telegraph. Monge, the inventor of descrip- 
tive geometry, made cannon and drilled their bores, and 
undertook the refining of steel, a new art which France 
owed to him. Powder was the greatest difficulty. Salt- 
petre was found in the ruins of Lyons, and sulphur in the 
burned forests of La Yendee. Chemistry improvised a nev/ 
method of refining and drying sulphur in a few days. To 
supply the mills, men rolled barrels containing carbon, 
saltpetre, sulphur, and copper balls, and powder was made 
in twelve hours. " Thus," says Biot, " was verified the 
audacious idea of a m.ember of the Committee of Public 
Safety ; we shall show them the saltpetre in the earth, and 
in five days we shall be loading our cannon." * Thus, I 
may add, speculativ^e enthusiasm was tranformed into active 
enthusiasm, and from the peaks of science, as from a new 
Olympus, the most abstract principles descended like the 
gods of Homer into the war of nations. 

* "Histoire des Sciences Pendant la Revolution," p. 54. 



9i EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



BOOK III. 

THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES FROM THE 
NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



Education is the development of the mind subject to the 
laws of all evolution, individual or collective. Hence the 
problem recently proposed in Germany and in England : 
Does the doctrine of evolution justify a study of the classics 
from the twofold standpoint of individual and of national 
development ? The answers are very varied, both in 
England, where Spencer and Bain attack the study of Greek 
and Latin, and in Germany, where Preyer, Haeckel, and 
Goering reject the classics and Yaihinger defends them.* In 
France, curiously enough, Latin and Greek are attacked from 
the rear by most of the pure litterateurs^ and by rhetoricians 
who have become journalists, like M. Frary ; they are 
advocated, on the other hand, by philosophers such as MM. 
Ravaisson, Renouvier, Renan, Lachelier, Guyau, Rabier, and 
many others, as well as by literary critics with philosophical 
views, such as M. Brunetiere. The same discussion has 
been going on in Italy, where a distinguished philosopher, 
M. Fornelli, has just published a very complete defence of 
classical education. f The question, apart from its specula- 
tive importance, is not only of scholastic, but of national 

* " Naturforschung und Schule." 

t " La Pedagogia e I'Insegnamento Classico." 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 95 

and international interest. It is not enough to discuss — as 
in most cases the disputants are content to do — the intrinsic 
value of this or that subject considered in itself ; we 
must estimate its relative value and place in the whole, its 
influence on the development of the national mind, and 
finally its greater or less utility in the maintenance of 
national in contact with foreign influences. A nation 
intent upon its future can neither abstract itself from its 
own past, nor from its present relations with other nations. 
After a preliminary Avord as to the very general applica- 
tions made of the theory of evolution in pedagogy, I 
shall endeavour to show that our choice must be determined 
by national evolution, and not, as Spencer assumes, by 
human evolution alone. 



96 EDUCATION FR03I A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF THE PARALLEL BETWEEN HUMAN EVOLUTION AND 
INDIVID UAL E VOL UTION, 

The principles of evolutioaaiy pedagogy, so skilfully handled 
by Yaihinger and Preyer and Spencer, are the following : (1) 
Man, the final result of zoological evolution, comprises in 
himself the preceding forms of life, according to " ontogenetic 
and philogenetic laws," i.e. according to the conditions of the 
genesis of the individuals of the race ; (2) Man is subject to 
physiological and psychological heredity ; by the exercise of 
those faculties he develops his inherited energies in the 
social environment, and transforms them into equivalents 
of a higher order ; (3) Man has a life that is not merely 
individual, but collective ; individuals and the community 
are mutually blended. If social life may be considered as 
the result of the hves of individuals, it is equaUy true, on the 
other hand, that the development of each individual may 
be considered as the effect and average of the social 
organism. Consequently, pedagogy can only become a 
science in so far as it is based on " physio-psychology " on 
the one hand, and on sociology on the other. 

The following famous law was laid down as a basis for 
the science of education by Auguste Comte : " Individual 
evolution should be in conformity to collective evolution." 
In this somewhat vague form, the fundamental rule of 
evolution istic pedagogy may certainly be justified. The 
development of the individual in every scale of the animal 
kingdom, passes through the principal stages through which 



HUMAN AND INDIVIDUAL EVOLUTION 97 

the species has passed ; we know that the successive stages 
of the human embiyo present us, in brief, with the history 
of hfe on the earth and succession of its principal forms. 
The laws of heredity show that a certain conformity of 
individual development to the development of the species 
is inevitable ; each individual is, so to speak, a particular 
specimen in which are to be found the essential features of 
the race. From the point of view of education, if the 
development of the individual and that of the race proceed 
along the same lines, the former will be accomplished with 
greater facility, bacause it will be more in conformity with 
the hereditary adaptation of the brain. Finally, the harmony 
of the individual and collective development is justified by 
the very end education should have in view, which is, strictly 
speaking, the subordination of the individual to the ends of 
the whole community. The individual must realize in him- 
self the social ideal ; he must be the community in miniature, 
not only as it is, but as it should be and as it tends to be. 
In a word, man must live the life of humanity as a whole, 
and must therefore be doubly a man. 

But, if the general principle of evolution is applied to the 
education of youth, it must be carefully interpreted as we 
pass on to particular consequences. According as we are 
seeking conformity, especially in individual education, to 
the past evolution of humanity, its present state, or its 
futm-e evolutions, we have three roads open to us ; there is, 
so to speak, a struggle between the past, the present, and 
the future. The problem of education is to conciliate these 
three points of view. In my opinion, the most important 
is conformity to the ideal of future humanity; harmony 
with existing humanity is the first means of attaining this 
end, and harmony with past humanity is a second butmore 
indirect means. On the latter, previously advocated by the 
pedagogic school of Herbart, Vaihmger has laid most 
emphasis. "The history of the gradual evolution of 
humanity is called in these days the history of civihzation. 
We may therefore deduce from the fundamental law of the 
9 



98 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

genesis of life, the law of mental genesis, formulated as 
follows : the intellectual development of each single indi- 
vidual should be a summary of the historical pages of the 
culture of humanity." * " Whoever wishes to attain to the 
level of our present civilization," wrote Ziller, a Herbartian, 
"must pass through the same stages of development as 
humanity in the progress of its culture." From this 
Yaihinger deduces the legitimacy of classical education, 
independently of any reform in it that may be considered 
desirable. 

This is going rather too fast. How can we pass imme- 
diately from a physiological law to a very general mental 
law ? Let us now see contradictory deductions drawn from 
the same general principles. Yaihinger concludes in favour 
of a classical education ; Spencer in favour of a scientific 
training — illogically, in my opinion. As for Ziller, he 
invented his famous system of concentration, i.e. he took 
each year an historical period as a centre, around which 
all other subjects were grouped — even natural history, 
drawing, and geography. For example, with third year 
of school-life, the history of the patriarchs; fourth, 
the judges of Israel ; fifth, the kings of Israel ; sixth, 
the life of Jesus ; seventh, the apostles ; eighth, the 
Eeformation. 

However, there is a profound truth in the law of parallelism 
between individual and collective development ; but we 
must first apply this law to the method and general spirit 
of education. Method should proceed from the simple to 
the complex,! from the easy to the difficult, from the 
concrete to the abstract ; it should also reproduce the 
characteristic of spontaneous activity presented by the de- 
velopment of humanity, so that the child can find out as 
much as possible by itself, and, by acting and thinking, 
experience the pleasure of acting and thinking. But we 
cannot allow that for this purpose it is necessary for the 

» Speucer, " Education," § 4, p. 75 (Tr.). t i^i<i- V- 73, et seq. 



HUMAN AND INDIVIDUAL EVOLUTION. 99 

child to go through all the intermediate and historic stages 
through which humanity itself has passed. Moreover, it is 
by no means certain that the mental state of a civilized 
child is identical with, or at least analogous to, that of the 
infantile phase of humanity. Even supposing the analogy 
existed, we may fairly ask if education should undertake to 
second the child's barbarous and savage tendencies, if it 
should not rather correct them by the aid of thousands and 
thousands of years of civilization. In fact, naturalism in 
pedagogy takes no account of two essential elements which 
present the methods of education from being identical with 
those of spontaneous development ; namely, language and 
literature. 

Language is a product of the accumulated reasoning of man, 
and also of man's observation and reflection. Learnina: to 
speak is an advance in mental evolution with all the acquired 
rapidity of centuries ; it is flying with the wings obtained 
by the human intellect, just as the bird when it leaves the 
nest for the first time flies at once with the wings acquired 
by the race ; it is a profiting by all the selections and by aU 
the victories which have marked the struggle for existence 
throughout the ages. To language add literature, which 
has been rightly called " humanity in miniature," and the 
evolution of the individual mind will be still further 
accelerated. All the gropings in the dark, the errors and 
defects of thought, are at once suppressed, and the child is 
transported to the goal without having gone through the 
intermediary stages. We only take the trouble to be born, 
and we become a man, an Englishman or Frenchman ; so, if 
we only open a book we can ride roughshod over centuries, 
and we may find ourselves further advanced than Euclid, 
Descartes, Leibnitz, or Newton. The disciples of Spencer 
declaim in vain against books and " book learning ; " the 
answer is that a distinction must be drawn between the 
first education and the second. We should not allow books 
to be abused while the child is still young, for its spon- 
taneous development should be respected ; in the second 



100 EDUCATION FROil A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

stage the book is the very basis of instruction ; it establishes 
an evident contrast between spontaneous and artificial 
education. In a word, there are two factors in education — 
nature and civilization ; books are the second factor, in 
these days more powerful than ever — they may be called 
the social factor. Books are social evolution at once fixed 
and accelerated. 

It follows from the preceding remarks that the parallel 
between the individual and the race should be only brought 
to bear on very general faculties and their legitimate use. 
It may also be granted that there are general mental states 
through which the individual passes, just as humanity 
passed through them. Comte proposed, in virtue of this 
doctrine, that we should rise professedly from the theo- 
logical or imaginative stage to the metaphysical or abstract, 
and thence to the scientific or positive. The theory of the 
three stages may be doubtful, but the principle is a true 
one, and it is certain that education is a series of " mental 
states," a development of the collective mind within the 
individual. The mind, like the body, has its ages ; we 
cannot expect an old head on young shoulders. 

If, from the subjective point of view of the faculties to 
be developed, we pass to that of the objects of instruction, 
the law of parallelism still obtains. There are groups of 
objects with which humanity is familiarized by a gradation 
which is also imposed on individuals. But these are only 
general results, and, so to speak, the general forms of know- 
ledge which should be in turn reflected in the mind of the 
young. The laws of physiological development support the 
theory, for what the individual reproduces successively in 
his evolution is only the iyiykal intermediary forms, and 
consequently the successive syntheses in which the stages of 
progress were recorded. Plato would have said that these 
are ideas successively realized. Like scientific instruction, 
literary and historical instruction must proceed by syntheses. 
i.e. by the successive recognition of the great typical forms 
of the human mind in their good, beautiful, and durable 



HUMAN AND INDIVIDUAL EVOLUTION. 101 

aspects — and that in the order of successive appropriation 
by the child's mind. 

Spencer, with Vico and Comte, asserts that we must pro- 
ceed from sensible observation to reflection, from the empiric 
to the rational, from the simple to the complex ; in morals 
even, he recommends starting from a low ideal, within the 
child's mental reach, and not exacting from them a moral 
precocity as dangerous in its way as physical precocity, a 
precocity which, if we take instances of prodigies of juvenile 
virtue, may produce in the long run mediocre or even 
vicious men.* Why does not Spencer apply the theory of 
evolution to intellectual education 1 Why does he expect 
from the child a scientific precocity which would be as 
detrimental as moral precocity 1 Why does he not recog- 
nize that between the great classics (particularly those of 
humanity in its early days) and the imagination of youth, 
there is a kind of harmony and " adaptation " .^ If the 
child should be progressively introduced to the ideas and 
sentiments of the race, if these ideas and sentiments are 
fixed in language and literature, it follows that the study of 
letters is the great introduction to morals and to social 
science. How can we expect the child by an entirely spon- 
taneous evolution to find for himself the thoughts which 
have become a human and national inheritance ? To find 
new ideas and new sentiments is nothing but the act of 
genius. Genius, like nature, creates ; genius proceeds from 
depth to form, from bird to flower ; the child can only pass 
from forms to depths to penetrate little by little the secrets 
of life and thought. To cultivate letters first and science 
afterwards, is to pass from imagination and sentiment to 
reasoning, from the concrete to the abstract, from general to 
special knowledge, from the complete to the partial exercise 
of the mind, from what acts on the heart and even on the 
character, to v/hat only acts on the understanding or on the 
memory. The child's intelligence, at the outset of its 

♦ Spencer, "Education," pp. 73, 135 (Tr.). 



102 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

evolution, cannot grasp the abstractions of science ; besides, 
these abstractions would produce a one-sided mental develop- 
ment, and therefore a deformation. Literature, on the 
contrary, furnishes a young man with, as it were, a pedal 
note or fundamental bass for the harmonious development 
of his mind, a note which will never cease to vibrate 
throughout the course of his studies, and even of his life. 

Spsncer, inspired by Kant and Schiller, has recognized the 
intimate analogy between the sesthetic sentiment and games, 
because both constitute an easy and disinterested exercise of 
our faculties for their own sake, apart from the tyranny of 
material needs. On the other hand, he does not ignore the 
value of games, and he even asserts that they are the best 
gymnastics for the body, because the most natural, general, 
and agreeable ; all scientific gymnastics with apparatus 
and systematic movements of particular limbs run the risk 
of disequilibrating the organism. Why, then, does he forget 
these principles when he passes on to mental gymnastics ? 
Literature exercises all the mental functions simultaneously, 
and gives them the supremely easy motion which Spencer 
lays down as the elementary basis of grace. Literature, 
poetry, and eloquence are the Olympic games of thought ; 
by them thought is strengthened and glorified. 

But, if literature is capable of giving free play to the 
artistic spirit, it is at the same time as serious a study as 
art itself. The true reason for its pre-eminence in education 
is that it is a free and living philosophy. It is a compre- 
hensive view of the whole world— first, the world of the 
senses and of the imagination (the first with which children 
come into touch), and, secondly, the intellectual, moral, and 
social world ; it is a series of vistas of art, morals, and 
science. And it is something more than this ; it is, if I 
may say so, the beating of the heart of humanity, a beating 
that must be felt by all if we do not wish it stopped. 

Another essential principle of the evolutionistic pedagogy 
is, as we have seen, that mental evolution should be due to the 
personal activity of the child, and not to passive instruction ; 



HUMAN AND INDIVIDUAL EVOLUTION. 103 

now, literary exercises — translation, composition, analyses, 
and explanations — arc the principal means of setting in play 
the intellectual initiation of children or young men ; I have 
shown that scientific instruction is entirely passive. The 
book of science appeals to little but the memory or to 
deductive reasoning ; it only exercises a certain faculty, 
cortain cellules of the brain, and those always the same, and 
always in the same direction. Either it leaves the student 
inert, or it demands an exaggerated and, into the bargain, a 
wearisome effort of comprehension on an isolated point ; as 
for invention, it does not call it into play. Thus it is like 
the scientific gymnastics above, wiiich, repressing all freedom 
of initiative, impose on a certain muscle determined on 
beforehand, repeated, fatiguing, and uninteresting work. 
The more energetic this exercise, the more dangerous it is ; 
children whom we want to make athletes remain abortions, 
children whom we want to turn into precocious savants 
remain imbeciles. Literature also appeals in succession to 
all the mental faculties ; in addition to the information we 
receive from it, it opens new fields to our view ; not only 
does it make us understand, but it makes us reflect and 
discover. It is not merely indicative, if I may say so, of 
these or those facts observed or laws demonstrated ; it is 
suggestive ; by the association of ideas and sentiments it 
excites the young not so much to recollection as to thought. 
Besides, science leads inevitably to over-pressure, and there- 
fore to premature exhaustion of the intellectual forces it 
professes to develop. Literature, on the contrary, is a 
relaxation in work itself, a pleasure in effort ; not unjustly 
does Descartes call this kind of reading *' conversation with 
the greatest minds of the past," and " studied conversation " 
in which, only giving of their best, they develop by sympathy 
what is best in others. 

Thus the theory of evolution — contraiy to the idea of its 
promoters, whose deductions are inaccurate — leads to the 
pre-eminence of literary over scientific education. Goering 
calls his gymnasiums schools of life, but the object of educa- 



104 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

tion is not, as Spencer and Goering seem to suppose, to make 
children live in advance the life that awaits them later, with 
all its after prosaic and melancholy realities ; its object is to 
make them live a simpler, a more intellectual and a more 
imaginative life, a life, in a word, which is younger and 
more ideal, and which will be a preparation for the other. 
Of course, there need be no discord between the studies of 
youth and the real life of ripened age ; but there should be 
a real evolution from one to the other, the former being a 
slow accumulation of intellectual and moral and ipso facto 
of social forces, the latter an expenditure and expansion of 
acquired forces, to the advantage of society itself. Hence 
education should be a culture of the most essential and most 
fundamental of the human faculties, upon which depends 
the development of the others ; and what are they but good 
sense, imagination kept well under control, taste, natural, 
simple, and noble sentiments, the love of the good and the 
beautiful, patriotism, admiration, and enthusiasm, which 
make the heart eternally young ? These are not " super- 
fluous" or even "useful," but they are what is really 
" necessary " to life. Besides, among the qualities one has 
a right to expect in a cultivated mind, there are some which 
are acquired and learned, while genius is not learned ; 
there are faults to be avoided, which genius does not always 
know how to avoid. Now, while favouring the selection of 
genius or superiorities, we must nevertheless cultivate in 
each individual those qualities which may be acquired, just 
as we must eradicate the faults that can be rooted out. 
These, then, are the essential characteristics of a classical 
education ; it must be young, sound, strict, sensible, rather 
logical than emotional, and where emotion does come into 
play it should only be for the simple and noble, the general 
and the generous. In a word, we have to establish founda- 
tions upon which each will later erect his own humble or 
lofty dwelling ; but the foundations must be really humane 
if we wish this education to conform to both the normal 
evolution of the whole of humanity, and to that of youno- 
minds in particular. 



CHAPTER II. 

GREAT NATIONAL INTERESTS AND THE CLASSICAL 
HUMANITIES. 

If the theory of evolution, applied to problems in pedagogy, 
has so far only led to very general and often rather vague 
conclusions, it is because the middle term between humanity 
and the individual — nationality, to wit — has not been intro- 
duced. I am now going to re-establish this middle term. 
It is not enough, in fact, for the development of the 
individual to be, with Comte and Spencer, in harmony with 
the development of the whole of humanity ; it must also be 
more particularly in harmony with national development, of 
which it is a summary, and to which it contributes. 

There can be no national evolution without a literary, 
scientific, and political elite; every nation needs savants, 
men of letters, and philosophers ; every nation needs a 
directing class, capable of preserving national traditions and 
at the same time of contributing to the progress the age 
requires. In other words, there is a kind of national brain 
which it is important to supply with the nourishment best 
adapted to the direction of the whole organism. On the 
other hand, a nation is in equal need of farmers, manu- 
facturers, merchants, and finally of artisans and labourers. 
But between these groups of men and professions equally 
necessary to the evolution of the whole, there is, however, 
an hierarchy, just as there is between the stomach and the 
brain in the living body, which are equally necessary to the 
evolution of the organism. The economical necessities of a 



106 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

nation are also material, and correspond, at bottom, to 
vegetable or animal life ; intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and 
political needs, on the contrary, are properly part of the 
human life, and answer to the higher necessities. If economic 
prosperity is the great means of preservation for a people, 
intellectual and moral prosperity is the great means of pro- 
gress. Further, as evolution advances, factors of a moral 
and intellectual order play a more predominant part, and 
become even the conditions of all the rest ; without 
theoretical science there can be no industry ; with moral 
and social science there can be neither political security nor 
social progress. It is therefore of the utmost importance to 
a people to organize a secondary education from which by 
selection superior capacities may issue, and which, on the 
other hand, may give to the country an enUghtened class, 
truly liberal, and truly worthy from its disinterested views 
to be the directing class. The great object of secondary 
education is to train up men into disinterested views in 
speculation and politics, and this education is therefore 
neither directly professional nor "special." Outside this 
sphere, sometimes above and sometimes below it, is room for 
professional training either of a higher or of a lower order ; 
but it is essential to maintain the hierarchy of the instruction, 
not to allow a more or less disguised professional instruction, 
with industrial, commercial, and agricultural objects, to 
become, whatever name it may assume, the equal of the 
real "humanities," i.e. science, literature, and philosophy. 
As we shall see further on, professional and technical 
instruction of every stage, of every type, should be boldly 
and soundly organized ; but it must not be detrimental to 
the teaching of the humanities, nor must it be substituted 
for the humanities. In a word, economic utilitarianism 
should not stifle the disinterested pursuit of science, letters, 
arts, philosophy, and politics, for the supreme interest for 
any nation is this very disinterestedness. 

This then, I repeat, is the first principle from which we 
start — a nation needs a liberal education on a soundly 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 107 

organized basis, and a system of special or professional 
iustructiou e(iuall7 well adapted to the particular utilities it 
re[i'escuts. My second principle is that secondary instruc- 
tion must be in harmony with the spirit of the nation, 
with its habits and aptitudes, with its history, with the 
traditions of its education, with its language, its literature, 
and its arts ; in short, with the forms and essential condi- 
tions of the national evolution. Primary education is one 
thing, secondary education another. The latter alone, 
having as its object the formation of enlightened minds — i.e, 
minds self-conscious, conscious of their individual and 
national function and of their origin — should be a summary 
of the great phases of national civilization ; it should cherish 
and develop a spiritual organism in which live again the 
different organisms whose totality has made the life of the 
nation. Let us see what a liberal education should be for 
those who can receive it and receive it in its fullest form.* 

I. The first question is this : Is the knowledge of the 
literature of one's own country enough in secondary educa- 
tion ? Now, if we look at it from the national standpoint, 
experience shows us that it is no longer enough in these 
days for a nation which aspires to be superior, to study its 
own language and its own literature. That kind of national 
monologue which was possible when communication between 
nations was more restricted is here impossible ; it narrows 
the mind, and eventually deforms it. In fact, ancient 
literature introduces the moderns to art, science, and civic 
life ; the French and German literatures have in their turn 
influenced each other and English literature. As M. 
Maneuvrier says, modern literatures have not been spon- 
taneously generated. From the time of the Greeks, every 
great literary renaissance proceeded from contact with 

* We shall see in the next book what kind of training, still general, but 
inferior to a classical training and not enjoying the same privileges, ought 
to be given to those who are early compelled by material and professional 
re(iuiroJucDts to engage in industry, commeice, and agriculture. 



108 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

another literature, principally with ancient literature, and 
if the literary spirit persists from generation to generation 
in a nation, it is owing to this perpetual contact. 

On the other hand, from the point of view of individual 
development, the study of the mother tongue is only suffi- 
cient in the case of exceptionally gifted minds. Secondary 
education should be regulated according to the average, and 
not according to exceptional students ; now, on the average, 
to the culture essential to the humanities, the study of a 
tongue other than the mother tongue is the shortest and 
surest method. A Frenchman, for instance, has a quick 
mind and a versatile intellect ; but the very facility with 
which he uses his intellect does not leave him enough time 
for reflection. When a French boy is reading a French 
book, unless he enjoys unusual reflective faculties, his mind 
is carried away by the general sense, and the details and 
shades of expression escape him. As M. Eabier says, " A 
French child reading a page of Pascal or Bossuet does not 
fully grasp it, i.e. only half grasps it." Exercises and trans- 
lations force the child to weigh every word, to ascertain its 
exact meaning, to find its equivalent ; he must also consider 
the inter-relations of the ideas and words in order to fix the 
sense concealed in the text ; finally, he must transpose the 
whole from one language to another, just as a musician 
transposes an air. The final result is that he has repeated 
for himself the labours of the thinker and writer ; he has 
re-thought their thoughts, and has revived the living foim 
which was organic to the writer's thought. He has had to 
reproduce a work of art. A cursory perusal of vs'orks in the 
mother tongue is rather like a stroll through a museum; 
translation from one language to another is like copying a 
picture ; the one makes amateurs, the other artists. In this 
way the sense of depth and the sense of form are simul- 
taneously acquired. And, further, the student acquires 
initiative, a quality particularly necessary to French and other 
children, in that they are — the French, at any rate — rather 
" apish." It is so easy for them to imitate that they rarely 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 109 

think of doing things of themselves. Bain and Sptncer 
have in vain endeavoured to maintain the paradox that the 
study of languages "tends to increase undue respect for 
authority ; " it is, on the contrary, the teaching of science ex 
professo which makes the pupils inert. " How can any one 
question the accuracy of a table of logarithms or of the laws 
of gravity ? " The French youth, by its faculty of rapid 
assimilation, has very soon changed the study of science into 
a purely mechanical "knack," and into an application of 
ready-made formulas. 

II. We have now to inquire what language in addition to 
the mother tongue should be chosen by preference for the 
development of the young. Here begins the great struggle 
between "ancient humanities" and "modern humanities." 
Let us first of all sum up and systematize all the reasons in 
favour of the study of Latin, and, if possible, add new 
reasons drawn from the laAvs of national and of individual 
evolution. As the attack has never varied, the same defence 
may be maintained. 

The evolution of the national mind cannot operate with- 
out a constant solidarity with that part of the past from 
which the present springs. How can it be denied that 
there exists in every race and in every nationality a kind of 
intellectual heredity ? By this it transmits a certain common 
spirit, wdiich is the genius of the whole race, the soul of the 
country. This intellectual and moral solidarity completes 
the organic solidarity, linking each generation to the 
indefinite series of its predecessors. Now, it is very evident 
that the French have historic and organic links with the 
Latin world, which still partially exists in France in the 
modern world. 

Is tradition, so often invoked in favour of the classics, 
only a prejudice, or is it a reason not only truly philo- 
sophical but at the same time patriotic ? The following is 
the answer of one who is no stranger to that part of social 
Bcience called by the Germans the psychology of peoples-— 



no EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

V'oTkerpsychologie. Every tradition based on nature and law 
is simply one of the essential conditions of preservation 
without which no evolution is possible for a nation. If 
blind attachment to tradition involves immobility, the no 
less blind contempt for national tradition no less involves it, 
for it suppresses living forces from which movement may be 
derived ; it deprives a nation of the power of marching like 
one man, under the pretext of enabling them to fly. In 
nature there is no evolution apart from continual repetition 
combined with graduated progress. A ray of light only^ 
advances by the incessant repetition of the same undulation/ 
The maintenance of the type in a living being is a repetition 
of the same forms ; by the change of ephemeral cdlules ifc 
ensures the persistence and unity of the living being. From 
the psychological point of view, memory plays the same 
role ; it preserves and repeats ; by this it swells the present 
by the whole series of past sensations ; without it, the con- 
sciousness, reduced to a passing flash, would only shine to 
be extinguished ; the living being would have ceased to exist 
for itself. The social organism is subject to similar laws 
to those governing the individual organism, and collective 
consciousness also owes its existence to the memory of the 
past.* History is not the whole of this memory ; I may 
even say that history is the most superficial and external 
memory of communities. Literature is connected with it in 
a far different fashion ; it is memory organized and active, 
an ever-present consciousness not only of great deeds in the 
national life, but a consciousness cognisant of its inmost 
sources, the sentiments that have inspired it and the ideas 
that have directed it. If the English evolutionists have 
specially insisted on the resemblance between the living and 
the social organism, the German evolutionists have by 
preference insisted on the analogy between the collective 
and individual consciousness. They do not consider the 

* On the importance of the law of repetition and imitation in society, 
see M. Tarde's very original and suggestive volume, " Les Lois 
d'Imitation." 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. Ill 

national spirit as a mere abstraction denoting the resultant 
of an aggregate of individual minds ; they attribute reality 
to the national mind. Without going with them so far as 
this, we may agree that there is a certain French or German 
spirit which is not merely the sum total of individual minds 
at this moment in France or Germany. We may also agree 
that this national spirit has its conditions of preservation, 
which are at the same time the primary conditions of its 
progress, and that a nation which, by the education of its 
youth, should violate in any point its hereditary ego, its 
national individuality, would, i]Jso facto, be attempting 
suicide. 

In fact, deep within great national traditions there are 
further restricted traditions, which maintain in certain 
classes a common spirit, and thereby establish a hierarchy 
in the depths of the general equality. The ruling classes in 
France have always, up to now, had a classical culture which 
comes to us from Eome, and, through Eome, from Greece. 
This culture is only the manifestation, more visible in the 
minds of an elite, of the influence exercised upon our whole 
race by Gr^eco-Roman antiquity. Have we any right to 
repudiate this heritage, or, to go further, this heredity, to 
break with the literary and artistic part of France, which 
itself is very largely a legacy from Greece and Rome ? It 
has been asked — What is the use of Latin ? It is useful as 
maintaining, in the first place, classical tradition, which is a 
national tradition, and consequently it serves to revive con- 
tinually in successive generations the ancient spirit blended 
with the spirit of France. Can it be said that tradition 
must necessarily preclude all progress 1 Assuredly, no ; but 
in the training of an enlightened youth it is the preliminary 
condition of the progress which the youth when he reaches 
manhood may be able to accomplish. Without continuity, 
especially in education, there is no permanent progress ; 
there may be revolution, but there will be no evolution ; 
now, revolution cannot change in a day the spirit of a 
nation. The national inheritance must therefore be pre- 



112 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

served, especially in the young, so that later new riches may 
be added to it. If, with liberal training of the influential 
classes, we lower and suppress classical culture, we stifle the 
French spirit by trying to force its nature, and talent to 
apply it abruptly to quite a new order of ideas and studies, 
we crush the intellectual and moral solidarity of the genera- 
tions. People are very often content to say that Latin is 
useful for the comprehension and writing of French (always 
the utilitarian point of view) ; we see that its true value lies 
much deeper ; it serves to maintain the French genius itself, 
of which classical education is an integral part, ever 
strengthening the French genius at its original sources.* 

In Germany, out of a population of forty-six milUons in 
round numbers, there are twenty-eight thousand students 
distributed between the faculties of law, medicine, Cathohc 
and Protestant theology, and finally of science and letters 
(the two latter combined in one called the Faculty of Philo- 
sophy, to remind us that the philosophical and universal side 
of science is of most importance). Thirty per cent, of this 
total study medicine, twenty per cent, law, twenty per cent, 
theology, fifteen per cent, letters, and fifteen per cent, science. 
All, ivlthout exception^ have learned Latin, and even Greek. 
A uniform MaturitdUp'ilfunrjen^ or certificate of examina- 
tion, declaring the student's "ripeness," alone gives to 
young men access to any of the faculties. Now, to what 
students are Latin, and especially Greek, practically in- 
dispensable ? To philologians and theologians, thirty-five 
per cent, of the whole ; while students in law, medicine, and 
science, i.e. two-thirds of the whole, find no room for serious 
application of those subjects. For it is perfectly useless to 
learn Latin and Greek merely to grasp the meaning of a few 
scientific or medical terms, such as anaemia, typhus, cholera, 
odontalgia. Why, then, is the study of Greek and a fortiori 

* The student should read the almirable exposition, by Mr. J. Churton 
Collins, of the influence of the ancient classics upon the development of 
English literature. Vide "The Study of English Literature" (Mac- 
millan), 1891 (2V.). 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 113 

of Latin retained in Germany ? Because, although Germany 
is not of the Latin race, she is none the less, like every 
civilized race, a co-heir of the great classical tradition ; 
and this tradition, m spite of her national and romantic 
literature, Germany does not wish to lose. She knows that 
in the German spirit, although to a less degree than in the 
French spirit, there still remains, blended with the influence 
of Christianity, a part of the spirit of classical antiquity. 
She feels compelled to carry the study of Latin and Greek 
fm'ther than we do, because she is not already Latinized by 
her own language and by centuries inspired by antiquity. 
She remembers that her national literature emerged but a 
century ago from barbarism, when Lessing, Herder, and 
Goethe "renewed on German soil the sentiment so long 
estranged from antiquity." * We know how familiar Goetho 
and Schiller were with the ancients. Need we recall Goethe's 
*' Iphigenia," his " Eoman Elegies," and the Journal of Art 
and Antiquity he founded ; Schiller's translations of the 
Greek " Iphigenia " and of the " Phoenicians," and finally 
his " Gods of Greece " ? Germany is not the country where 
a glorious tradition will be repudiated.f 

Nor is it so in England. From nineteen to twenty-four 
the young Englishman, at Oxford or Cambridge, under the 
old cloisters, amid the verdure of the country, reflects, reads, 
and writes, and hves in touch with the great writers of 
antiquity. If he is a good humanist he wins a scholarship, 
and then a fellowship, and has a secured income of £150 
a year for a few years. Paul Bourget, in his notes on 
England, shows how deeply the classics have made their 
influence felt in English thought. The author of " Julius 
Ciesar" and " Coriolanus " learned what he knew of antiquity 
from Italy and France, from Boccaccio, Montaigne, and 
Amyot ; Milton wrote two volumes of Latin verse — 

* Brunetiere, " La Question de Latin." 

t The Graeco-Latin studies are further exaggerated by treating the 
dead languages as objects of instruction and knowledge, instead of as 
meani of aesthetic and intellectual education. 

10 



114 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

" Elegies," and " Sylva3 ; " Cowper wrote an elegy in Latin 
Alcaics ; Byron wrote an imitation of the " Ars Poetica," 
which he preferred to his " Childe Harold." Bred in this 
classical atmosphere, Keats rapidly appropriated, though 
partly second-hand, the spirit of classical antiquity ; his 
longest poem is devoted to Endymion ; his most charming 
ode is on a Grecian urn on which were carved lovers and 
flute-players dancing. The art of the sculptor, which takes 
from time life and love and action, and in a measure places 
them in the immortality of pure form, inspired in Keats a 
poem sculptured in Greek form, giving the sentiment of the 
immovable in motion itself, and of the intellectual in the 
sensible.* Shelley, in his turn, is saturated with Plato and 
Sophocles. Tennyson's two masterpieces are "Tithonus" 
and " Ulysses." Finally, Swinburne's contributions to the 
" Tombeau de Gautier " were four odes, in English, French, 
Latin, and Greek. Utilitarian England, therefore, preserves 
religiously the cult of classic antiquity, at least in the educa- 
tion she gives to her ruling classes. If the Latin nations, 
in the education of their higher middle classes, wish to cast 
off not only Greek but Latin, they will be denying their 
ancestry, and by this, as it were, intellectual ingratitude, 
they will be preparing the way for the decadence of their 
national spirit.f 

There is a second condition of French greatness which 
should be maintained, a condition that has made French a 
classical language, saturated with the genius of the ancients, 

* *' Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 

Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, 

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone. 
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 

Thy songj nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, 
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve j 
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss. 

For ever wilt thou love and she be fair I " 
t Vide note, p. 112. 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 115 

an intellectual and ?^7.so facto a universal language. It has 
often been remarked that when Greece extended her frontiers 
eastward, and by the conquests of Alexander made the 
world Hellenic, it was by taking its language with it. 
Greece remained even after the Turkish empire was founded, 
because she faithfully guarded and maintained her language. 
AYhen the Greeks and Carthaginians were disputing the 
sovereignty of Sicily, it was the Greeks who won the day, 
in spite of numerical inferiority, because their idiom had 
been imposed upon the indigenous tribes. So far, France 
has had certain privileges because of her language. French, 
it has been said, a genuine legacy from the Romans, was the 
channel through which ancient civilization found its way 
into Europe. Not only is France the land of letters and 
art, the great centre of attraction for England, Italy, Spain, 
and Russia ; not only has she more foreigners among her 
residents and more tourists passing through her territoiy 
than any other country, but her language, which has been 
international since the fifteenth century, is " the common 
idiom of the best society in every country." If a book is to be 
published, addressing not a Kmited public but readei^ of 
every race, it is written in French. Everywhere we find 
newspapers in French — in Rome, London, Constantinople, 
Germany, Servia, and Egypt. The civihzed world has given 
French an official position in the curricula of their secondary 
schools and in their higher instruction. There is no liberal 
education into which it does not enter. But, for a certain 
number of years past, alarming symptoms have set in of 
competition in which French will with difficulty hold its 
own — especially the competition of English, which is spoken 
by a hundred millions of men, and German, which has become 
the language indispensable to men of science in every 
country The Germans, too, recognize and appreciate the 
importance of a tongue which is spread far and wide by 
expansion, whether industrial and commercial or literary ; 
and they therefore bestow jealous care in imposing and pro- 
pagating their language wherever they can. French, on the 



116 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDrOINT. 

other hand, after having spread all over Europe, is receding 
to our own frontiers — frontiers, too, which are more 
restricted. Let us beware. A philosopher* has justly 
remarked that the evolution of languages, their flow and 
ebb, follows, as a rule, the progress and regress of the genius 
of nations. As soon as French ceased to be the " organ of 
reason," we should see it recede further still, and with the 
decrease of its influence we should see decreasing the 
influence and the very security of our own country. Now, 
our language can only persist and become more widespread 
as long as it remains classical, and as long as it draws the 
breath of life from classical sources. We have, therefore, 
no right to abandon either a national system of education 
which has made our language literary, or the historical 
traditions our language has faithfully guarded for so long ; 
that would be breaking with the glory and influence of France. 
Another condition of our national greatness is our artistic 
sense and superiority of taste. In the last French Exhibi- 
tion we showed considerable savoir-faire in everything 
referring to mechanics and science ; we displayed both skill 
and ingenuity, but, on the whole, our men of science and 
our engineers showed the world nothing very new or very 
important. We owe our superiority to art, and our industry 
itself owes its perfection to the traditional taste of our 
artisans who are aU more or less artists. The general 
organization and the architecture of the Exhibition was 
itself a work of art and, at the same time, a piece of 
mechanics. I^Tow, is it supposed that the traditional classical 
training and the Latin basis of instruction for the ruling 
classes does not serve to maintain the taste for the beautiful 
and for lovely form, first in the enlightened classes who 
give orders for so many works of art, and then by inevitable 
contagion in the working classes, who are strangers to 
neither our literature nor our art ? If this is a result of 
national heredity, is it not also a result of national education.? 

* M. Lachelier. 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANiriES. 117 

If impressionism were to invade our literature and art, and 
if it were no longer opposed by the classical training of the 
middle classes, upon which primary instruction itself is 
modelled, we should see gradually vanishing those aesthetic 
qualities of judgment, good taste, accuracy, delicacy, and 
refinement which so far have persisted in our industries, and 
which alone have up to the present sustained us against 
foreign competition. Classical tradition, privileged because 
it is not only classical but national, because our liteiature is 
inspired by the ancients, is therefore the natural safeguard 
of our literary and artistic genius. Suppose that instead of 
language the only instrument of art were sculpture, and 
further assume that all the statues of antiquity were collected 
in a single museum; those who wished to be artists would be 
compelled, nolens volens, to imitate and study the master- 
pieces of Phidias and Praxiteles. Indirect intercourse 
through imitators is not enough ; and if the objection be 
raised that the moderns, too, have produced masterpieces, 
the obvious retort is that they have accurately followed the 
school of the ancients, to which younger schools must always 
have recourse. 

It has been stated that the arguments for Latin and 
Greek are of equal weight for Sanscrit. The Indian tale of 
Nala, it has been said, is a pearl of poetry. Must we there- 
fore learn Sanscrit to read it and other Hindoo masterpieces ? 
No ; because Sanscrit is too far from us, much further from 
us than Latin or Greek, and it is not only too difficult but 
also of no use. So with Hebrew, to which we owe so much, 
but of which we are not heirs in the direct line. Besides, 
neither Sanscrit nor Hebrew have the classical qualities. 
Thanks to the leism'e at the disposal of the free men of 
Graeco-Roman antiquity, and thanks to the narrow limits of 
their country and, in general, of their life, and, last of all, 
thanks to the limited development of civilization, the ancients 
could find means of expression in language as well as in 
marble and stone, in perfect conformity to their ideas and 
sentiments : depths in their eyes not going beyond form, 



118 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

thej were able to realize that perfect harmony which is the 
beautiful. Every one will agree that Greek and Koman 
literature is the most harmonious and finished of all litera- 
ture, that in it we find the most intimate agreement of 
thought and sentiment with expression. Ancient languages, 
less abstract and less exhausted than ours, have the advantage 
of incessantly appealing to natural and healthy imagination, 
to natural and healthy sentiments. The poets of antiquity 
were accustomed to paint in a few words, and thus they 
bring before the youthful mind a whole series of scenes at 
once animated and familiar. Take any lines of Yirgil, even 
those which have become more or less hackneyed— 

" Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant 
Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrse . . . 
. . . Hie Candida populus antro 
Imminet . . . 
Pontum aspectabant flentes ..." 

and we must feel that lines Uke these, so simple in their 
form, are best calculated to awaken in youthful minds a 
taste and a sense for aU the arts, from poetry and music to 
painting and architecture. A Latin verse is of itself, as it 
were, a small building, a self-sufficing and symmetrical 
structure ; it is complete from foundation to roof. It is at 
the same time a picture with foreground and background. 
I am not alluding to the musical rhythm inherent in classical 
verses. May it not be said that a Virgilian verse^intro- 
ducing the young to the common principles and common 
beauties of the different arts, to symmetry, eurythmy, 
structural elegance, accm^ate drawing, sober and natural 
colouring — has a virtue due to both the genius of the 
language and the genius of the poet ? That is why the 
study of Latin verses is eminently adapted to develop taste 
in the young ; that taste which, as we have just seen, is not 
useless to nations and races, even in industrial competition. 
To study the ancients from translations is not enough. 
To grasp both the spirit and the letter needs direct contact 
with the original. Let us never lose hold of the principle 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES 119 

that in education— especially in aesthetics— form is of capital 
importance ; our youth should learn the art of giving forms 
to their ideas and sentiments, for all unformulated thought 
is incomplete, and no sentiment is complete but that which 
inspires first language, and then action. In art, depth and 
form are, as Flaubert says, " consubstantial." Lovely forms 
are already of themselves educative ; they are like frames 
which are engraved on the mind, and surround ideas, senti- 
ments, and actions, and increase their beauty. The child 
ultimately thinks, feels, and acts under the category of the 
beautiful as well as under those of the good and the true ; 
the ugly, as well as the absurd and the shameful, gives it a 
shock. In a word, there is no elevated education for the 
young who wish their studies to be rounded and complete, 
without aesthetics— a complete resthetic training— without 
the knowledge of, and direct intercourse with, the classics. 

Have Greek and Latin, then, a mystical influence ? Are 

the classics, then, a religion? Their mystical vii-tue, if 

thereby is understood an influence that is latent because it 

is profound and vital, springs from the invisible links by 

which we are, and have been for twenty centuries, connected 

with antiquity. Their virtue is perfectly natural, in no way 

supernatural, akin to that of heredity, of the race, of 

nationality. And for the literary and ruling classes, classical 

culture is indeed a religion, but a religion without dogmas 

and without a ritual, a religion which leaves the modern 

mind its liberty, while it connects it with the spirit of 

antiquity. Since history, physiology, and psychology exhibit 

our solidarity with the Latins, what utilitarian calculations 

can prevail against influences which come into play from 

within and not from without ? If religion is daily losing 

its power, almost the only cult that can replace it is the cult 

of the beautiful, of literature, art, and philosophy ; it is the 

disinterested love of what is great, the habit of thinking 

and acting for the community, and not only for ourselves — 

a habit which was considered as the greatest of the virtues 

by the ancients, because in those days all was centred in the 



120 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

city. The ideal of luimanity, resulting from an anthropo- 
morpliic religion, was ever present to their minds. They 
lived in constant communion with the gods, and therefore 
they produced a host of heroes. That is also the reason 
why they produced so many masterpieces in art and litera- 
ture, in which the grandeur and simplicity of the human 
ideal were deified. 

Not only does Latin represent the current of antiquity 
blended as it later is with the stream of modern times, but 
it also represents the literature of Christianity. Now, it is 
needless to say that even freethinkers are always influenced 
by the Christian spirit ; it is an integral part of our 
nationality. A large proportion of the population is still 
numbered among the " faithful ; " they are represented by 
a clergy who have had a classical training, and whose 
influence is far from gone. Our ruling classes should be 
at least the equals of the clergy in culture. 

One last condition of national greatness, rightly invoked 
by the partisans of a classical training, is that which makes 
of the cultured classes the depositaries and " natural guardians 
of what are called the public virtues." Now, literature and 
philosophy have little by little become almost the only means 
of communicating these virtues so essential to national 
greatness. At the same time that Graeco-Eoman religion 
was deifying humanity, it deified the " patria," which, being 
more limited in extent, was also more immediately present 
to the minds of all. The patriotism of the ancients is still 
a priceless training for our own youth. The role played by 
both civic and military virtues among the ancients was so 
important that they furnish to modern races an imperish- 
able example. It is a commonplace to reproach antiquity 
with its narrow views of liberty, with its ignorance of the 
delights of representative government, with the rebeUion 
against tyrants corresponding to modern resistance to 
lawful authority, with the continual sacrifice of the indi- 
vidual to the State, with its sumptuary laws, with the 
uniformity of its system of education, with the slavery of 



THE CLASSICAL IIUMAXITIES. 121 

the maDj and the sovereignty of the few, with its pardoning 
of public crimes, if successful, and of private crimes if 
accompanied by public services. All that is true enough, 
and we cannot make it too familiar to the young. But the 
thesis of the partisans of the classics is also true, and the 
evolutionists should be the last to deny the educative value 
of the morality of the ancients. Gradation, in fact, is the 
fundamental law of the evolutionists ; if ancient patriotism 
was more simple and more naiTow than modern patriotism, 
that is an additional reason for familiarizing our youth with 
it before attempting to exhibit the more complex forms of 
our political life. They will thus be familiar with the historic 
evolution of the idea of the State, from the violent and 
limited idea of the Dorians, to the wider and more liberal 
view of the Athenians ; from the exclusive attachment to 
the city among the Greeks and early Romans, to the gradual 
spread of cosmopolitanism in the time of Caesar and his 
successors. Ancient patriotism, too, has a quality of funda- 
mental importance in education — its heroic character. Our 
opponents can scarcely hope to suppress Greek and Eoman 
history ; why, then, should they object to direct intercourse 
with those authors who have immortalized so many noble 
figures ? This direct intercourse, of which we have recog- 
nized the necessity from the standpoint of literature and 
art, has the further moral advantage of being better able to 
make the young alive to that epic and dramatic life, which, 
merely as an effect of perspective and distance, is none the 
less an ideal, preparatory to real life.* " Eepresentative 



• M. Fornelli's answer to the opponents of a classic training is an 
excellent one, being the mere enumeration of the following names, each 
recalling instances of dramatic simplicity : MiltiaJes, Aristides, and 
tlie other heroes of Marathon ; Leonidas at Thermopylaj; Theraistocles and 
the Athenians at Salamis; the Athenians and Spartans at Plataa ; Thra- 
sybulus; the Thebans who liberated Cadmus, and were invincible under 
I'elopidas and Epaminondas ; then among the Romans, the first Brutus, 
Horatius Codes, Mucius Scscvola, and Clelius in the epic war again^-t the 
TarQuins; the retreat of the people to the Mons Sacer, and the dramatic 



122 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

government " will be familiar to them quite soon enougli, 
and we can only hope that children will at once understand 
the just and dignified side of the sentiment of contemporary 
liberty. 

The moderns have sounded depths of the human soul 
unknown to the ancients ; charity, modesty, the chivalrous 
worship of woman, the higher forms of love, melancholy, 
the intense love of great nature herself, of the ocean and 
the mountains. In general there is more delicacy, com- 
plexity, and refinement in modern sentiments, and often, 
also, more depth ; but from the pedagogic point of view, 
the most important qualities are those that are simple and 
strong — that is, to repeat what I said before, ancient 
heroism. The ancients were nearer the gods, a diis recentes^ 
or shall I say, nearer nature ? Whether the illusion be 
real or due to distance, they are to us, in a measure, sublime. 
" The Greeks," said Euripides, " walk in the light." The 
Athenians took as their emblems, besides the bird of Minerva 
with its eyes peering into the night, the busy bee and the 
grasshopper sacred to the muses, working and singing in the 
open air. Their tragic poets and philosophers try to reveal 
to men the lofty truths, " the mighty laws on feet sublime, 
daughters of the celestial aether." * It was on the shores 
of Ionia with Socrates and Plato that human thought first 
assumed conscious form. At the same time, in the presence 
of the great mystery of the world, it counts the possible 
words of the enigma, and of each it makes a metaphysical 
system. There, also, was born history, and even philo- 
sophical history, which aims at the discovery of causes and 



adventures of Coriolanus, Fabius, Cincinnatus, Virginia, Licinius Dentatus, 
Papirius, Camillus, Montius, Dccins, the Romans at Caudine Forks, 
Fabricius, the blind Claudius, Curius Dentatus, Attilius Regulus, the 
Romans conquered by Hannibal, and again conquering in their turn, and 
then as masters of the world. 

* vSfxoi 

'Ti/z/TToSes, ovpaviav 5i' aXQi^a 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 123 

laws. Alt, poetry, eloquence, pliilosophy, history, science, 
" all we love comes from the same source." 

The Romans, too, had a sovereign contempt for death, 
and a jealous worship of a country that was ever advancing, 
ever growing. To the natural laws that Greece adored, they 
gave the immutable and rigid forms of written laws. They 
have the majesty of reason. M. Brunetiere has well said 
that the ancients — especially the Romans — were cosmo- 
politan, that they observed, so to speak, composed, and 
wrote " outside and above the categories of space and time." 
They drew the psychological outlines of "the universal 
man." And their psychology and ethics alike are " lay ; " 
and this, continues M. Brunetiere, wiU some day prevent 
their proscription or perhaps even make them compulsory. 
*' Fanatics may be created by a Bossuet if misunderstood, or 
by a Voltaire if read aright ; but neither Cicero nor Livy 
could make fanatics even if we wished them to." The 
Latin classics form a body of universal practical reason ; 
the Greeks, by their very originality, exhibit a more indi- 
vidualistic character. Their reason is often a little on one 
side or the other of the real point ; they have the intem- 
perance and now and again the eccentricity of genius ; they 
think less like men in general, and feel less like men in 
general. 

After all, where was the first sign of unity in the human 
race ? Eome, the Eternal City, was not merely the 
Pantheon of the gods of conquered races, it was a " micro- 
cosm of the intellect of all nations." We may look forward, 
with M. Fornelli, in the more or less distant future, to a 
wider, more organic, and more spiritual unity, in which the 
whole of humanity will be concentrated and represented. 
There are many embryonic organs in the life of each 
modern nation which point to this organization in the 
future, to the distant fusion of the soul of every nation into 
a single soul. But as long as this is not accomplished, our 
youth will not have at its disposal, as the common basis of a 
liberal education in all nations, a form of humanism, wider 



124 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

than the Eoman, and adopted and increased by Christianity. 
Let me add that French humanism is a natural growth from 
this — or even the elevation of it to a still greater degree of 
universality. How, then, can our national literature, in its 
most intimate spirit, be understood, and more particularly, 
how can it be maintained, by ever widening its horizon, 
without at the same time making it lose its natural charac- 
teristics, if we are not constantly reviving the spirit of 
antiquity and the spirit of Christianity, combined with the 
original characteristics of our race ? The individualism of 
the German and English literature makes them ill-adapted 
for educational purposes, and especially for the education of 
neo-Latins like the French ; they are not " universally 
intelligible." Eead Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, Uhland, and 
Heine, when they are not inspired by the classical spirit, and 
when they even surpass the old humanism ; the inspirations 
of their genius, great as they are, are so stamped with the 
individual mark of the German consciousness that very 
often, as M. Fornelli says, we do not really grasp them or 
appreciate them in all their inmost ideality. The future 
will have to decide which will in the end prevail — "the 
content of the German consciousness which is only a great 
historic moment in life and Christian civiHzation," or the 
content of a consciousness which " will endeavour to surpass 
Christianity itself." M. Fornelli, in the latter quotation, 
seems to allude to the French, for it is obvious that since 
the Eevolution, our moral and social philosophy is en- 
deavouring to surpass even Christianity, and, in general, all 
positive religion. M. Fornelli thinks that a vast synthesis 
will in all probability prevail, a new humanism of the 
future generations, to which each national consciousness 
will contribute its own share — but divested of all individual 
character. However that may be, the part played by- 
France in this fusion may be, and ought to be, a great one. 
The evolution of the French spirit has passed from Roman 
to Christian universality, and from that to a purely human 
universality; the time has not yet come to break through 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 125 

these concentric circles. By separating ourselves violently 
from our origins, we would be separating ourselves from the 
very principles of our spiritual life. The law of continuity 
applies to the national spirit and literature just as it applies 
to politics and to social economy. If it is of moment in 
the struggle for existence to have enough flexibility to 
adapt ourselves to new environments, it is equally important, 
as I have sho^\^l, to preserve the typical force and its 
essential and hereditary characteristics ; a single form, with 
the maximum of unity in the maximum of variety, assures 
to every being and to every nation a long life. The object 
of education is to maintain this form, to force all minds into 
the national mould, which, even if imperfect, has the 
advantage of offering an individuality, a solidity, and a 
unity in which, different consciousnesses come into contact 
and multiply their power. 

As the advice of foreigners in matters that concern us is 
always interesting, I may add that, according to M. Fornelli, 
"among the elements that have most of all contributed to 
the eminence of France in the world of literature, we must 
place ber classical education with its constant bent to litera- 
ture." And he adds that the French may venture to 
abandon tbis system without immediate danger — " the plas- 
ticity and the wealth of their language, the profoundly 
literary thought and taste of their nation, allow them to free 
themselves in a measure from the chaste restraint of the 
masters of classic art," whereas the Italians could not. In 
a measure, certainly ; but we must not abuse this per- 
mission, or we should very soon lose our acknowledged 
superiority. 

We see that the State cannot rid itself of historical and 
philosophical considerations in organizing a system of in- 
struction for the ruling classes. It is in vain for M. Raoul 
Frary to say that we can understand culture of anything but 
dead wood ; Latin literature is not dead wood ; it is one of 
the principal mother roots whose sap still mingles with that 
of the whole tree, and contributes to keep it ever green. 



126 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

Not only is Latin national to ns, but it is also the only 
pedagogic language having the characteristic of being inter- 
national, for it is the common study of the enlightened 
classes in all great nations. If in these days savants have 
ceased to write letters from one country to another in Latin, 
it is none the less true that there is always this connecting 
link between civilized countries, that every really well- 
educated man, whether a man of letters or of science, to 
whatever country he belongs, has had a classical training. 
A great American could say that every civilized man has 
two countries, his own and France ; so every well-educated 
man can say he has two languages, his own and Latin. 
Latin thus establishes as it were a kinship between nations. 
Replace it in the education of the higher classes by living 
languages according to the taste of each pupil, reduce classics 
to the minimum, restricting them to the few amateur 
antiquarians who will become more and more rare, and you 
will have a France not only severed from her national spirit, 
but from the modern spirit of other nations, who will have 
kept, in the case of their enlightened classes, classics and 
national culture side by side. We shall thus be quite out- 
side universal agreement. 

Latin has this advantage over Greek in having been a 
living language in literature and science almost to our own 
days. If in the study of antiquity and the origin of science 
or philosophy, Greek is everything and Latin of next to no 
value ; on the other hand, Latin is everything in the study 
of the literary, scientific, and philosophical movement of the 
Middle Ages and of modern times ; it was always the 
language of men of science, and in Latin they wrote their 
most important works. Only in our own times has the 
development of the national spirit driven out the custom of 
writing in Latin, and has raised each language to the 
honour of being the language of science. M. Cesca * goes 
so far as to hope that the progress of the same spirit of 

* " La Scuola Secondaria Unica." 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 127 

nationality, nrging all nations to write in their own tongues, 
will provoke a reaction, and that Latin will eventually 
become once more the " language of the learned." And in 
fact, as long as the scientific movement was confined to a 
few nations, it might very well be expected that, in order to 
keep themselves in touch with the progress of science, men 
should know the principal modern languages ; but already 
in these days, one has to know German, English, French, 
Italian, Russian, and Dutch. National universities are 
arising around us ; each nation is anxious to be intel- 
lectually independent and does not wish to recognize the 
hegemony of another ; each publishes the work of its scien- 
tific men in its own tongue ; soon it will be impossible to 
keep in touch with foreign work and to follow the scientific 
movement, for it will be impossible to learn all foreign 
languages. Latin being already the universal instrument 
of literary and historical culture in secondary education 
throughout the civilized world, the question will perhaps 
arise as to the advisability of writing in, or at least trans- 
lating into, Latin all books on science — at least as long as 
Volapiik is not preferred ! 

This may be but a dream, yet if the experience of ages 
teaches us that the classics are ;par excellence the best means 
of literary and artistic culture, that, with philosophy, they 
are even the best means of communicating to the mind the 
disinterestedness and enthusiasm necessary to every great 
science, and necessary also to civic life in the ruling classes, 
the classics must be maintained in their integrity in all 
cases where position in life admits, and we must concede to 
no other training the same rank, honour, diplomas, and 
social privileges, if we are to avoid its falling into disrepute 
and its ultimate ruin. If only one succeeds in developing 
above the average the capacities of some five or six boys out 
of a class of fifty, this small elite will hand on the great 
tradition of letters, art, philosophy, scientific speculation, 
and far-sighted policy — a tradition which, as I have shovvn, 
is the very life of our race from the intellectual, moral, and 



128 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

civic standpoints. "But," some one will object, "what 
about the average boys ? " My answer to that is : — when we 
are estimating the value of the classics, we should not discuss 
mere results alone ; there is another point which has been 
unwisely neglected, and that is the influence of suggestion, 
of which in other cases contemporary philosophy has shown 
the importance. The average boy who has for eight or ten 
years been in daily contact with teachers who are inspired 
by lofty and disinterested motives in harmony with our 
national and international traditions ; who has heard, even 
unwillingly, a series of (sometimes eloquent) lessons on 
noble subjects ; who has read a certain number of pages in 
the masters of ancient literature in direct touch with 
antiquity ; who has been through a complete and not a 
mutilated course of philosophy, transporting him to the very 
highest regions of thought ; who has had as fellow-students 
distinguished and often superior boys ; who has witnessed 
their efforts and their success ; who has in a certain measure 
experienced the influence of the environment, of that moun- 
tain air which is saturated with the glories of the past ; — 
that boy, mediocre though he be, will not in the long run be 
in the same frame of mind as a boy who has been hard at 
work at nothing but science, French, and modern languages. 
Is there no unconscious suggestion in the fellowship with 
highly trained minds ? Does not the teacher of a picked set 
of boys exercise over an idle lad some unconscious influence ? 
If the master has the love for the beautiful, a cultured taste 
in ancient art and modern science, a philosophical and 
patriotic zeal — in a word, enthusiasm for all noble ideas, is 
it possible that even his worst pupils should not, unknown to 
themselves, experience a healthy stimulus ? They will not 
perhaps know the date of the capture of Constantinople or 
of the battle of Poitiers ; they will be quite at sea as to the 
Investitm^e dispute or the "Wars of the Eoses ; they will not 
know whether Salzburg is in Austria or Germany, or if Sens 
was in the old province of Champagne or Burgundy ; they 
will be unable to extract a square root or to describe a 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIKS. 129 

pneumiitic machine ; any boy from the technical, or even 
from the primary, schools will be able to teach them some- 
thing on these points and many others ; but, on the other 
hand, they will have acquired by the influence and suggestion 
of their environment a certain elevation of mind, a classical 
bias, a more or less latent taste, a sum-total of faculties 
which are at once human and national, and which are only 
developed in contact with noble literatures and philosophy. 

If, on leaving the lyceum, the boys bathed in the waters 
of Lethe and forgot all the Greek and Latin they knew, 
nothing being left but the cerebral development and 
tendencies acquired, their forgetfulness would by no means 
prove the inutility of classical studies. In fact, the matter 
of a language gradually fades from the memory, but the 
effect of mental training is persistent — a truism too often 
forgotten by our pedagogic iconoclasts. In a country walk, 
the most important thing is not so much the point reached, 
although it is good to get to a point whence one may obtain 
a lovely view, as the ground covered, the air breathed, the 
mind and body refreshed, and the health and strength 
acquired by exercise. Take a lad prepared for matriculation 
in a year by the most expeditious means, and then emerging, 
as it were, from a hothouse, this short-sighted and mechanical 
youth will be in no way the equal of what are disdainfully 
called the " dry husks " of our lyceums, who, even if they 
are ignorant, have nevertheless gained something from con- 
tact with a higher order of mind. For my part, I have 
never found a lad who has not absorbed from classical 
culture some drop, however small, of intellectual sap. No 
doubt the ruling classes should be given a more positive 
training than Latin affords, as far as public morals, social 
economy, law, and politics are concerned ; but it is of 
paramount importance to give them, with what is essential 
in modern subjects, a culture that is disinterested and 
really ancient and classical. Moral and civic education is 
already neglected, and what will happen when literary and 
classical education itself is gone and there is only scientific 
11 



130 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

instruction left ? — instruction, I say advisedly, for I repeat 
that the sciences in theniselves do not constitute an educa- 
tion, whereas literature and philosophy do. 

It is in vain for Spencer to urge that what occupies the 
leisure part of life should occupy the leisure part of educa- 
tion ; * for I cannot admit that the humanities only repre- 
sent the hours of leisure in life. Are not our manhood and 
citizenship of more moment than our profession ? Should 
not the engineer be a man all day — a man civilized, with a 
love for the good and for the beautiful, a man intellectually 
cultivated and morally strong, capable of something beyond 
professional routine ? What Spencer calls the leisure part of 
human life is really its most essential side. The object of 
literary culture is not to enable you to read Horace and 
Yirgil in your idle moments, but to transform and to 
beautify your inner nature ; its object is to take you along 
the path which has been trodden by past generations, by 
your own country, and which other nations in their turn will 
tread. After that, whether you do or do not read Yirgil is 
of little import ; even in bridge-building there will still 
remain a sense of elegance and beauty which should not be 
neglected from the utilitarian, the moral, or the national 
points of view. After all, even in private life, the first 
place must be reserved for the disinterested, the noble, and 
the beautiful. " Engage in scientific pursuits," says one of 
our poets, " but do not absolutely neglect literature ; keep a 
place for it in your minds ; keep for it a green nook, to use 
the quaint English expression, a little spot where the flowers 
of the imagination may bloom, the flowers that perfume and 
beautify our lives." f 

Is the reconciliation of a classical training with the 
scientific requirements of the age an impossibility ? I 
think not. But for the solution of this problem, to which 
I shall presently come, it is clear that we must simphfy our 
teaching in ancient literature, and keep to what is essential. 

* Spencer, p. 39. f Coppee. 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 131 

Among the dead lan^^uages there is one, viz. Greek, the 
complete study of which, pursued to the end, is not necessary 
to all boys receiving a liberal education, at least to all those 
who are looking forward to a scientific career. The French 
are not neo-Greeks, but neo-Latins, and French literature was 
only inspired by Greek through the medium of Latin. We 
might even, strictly speaking, conceive of the teaching of 
Latin without Greek ; such a system has long existed here, 
and in the brightest days of our literature ; it obtains in the 
first-class German ReaUchule (wrongly compared to our 
special or technical schools, although equivalent to the 
science side of our schools), and it also obtains in other 
countries. The aesthetic, philological, and philosophical 
superiority of Greek compared with Latin is not without a 
certain inferiority fi'om the pedagogic point of view. Greek 
is a complicated language, very rich, subtle, free, and 
flexible, no less romantic than classic, and with forms that 
are unfixed and fluctuating — a marvellous language, no 
doubt, but a language whose marvels are only revealed after 
profound study such as we can scarcely expect the whole of 
our sixty thousand students to bestow upon it. We mio-ht 
therefore sacrifice Greek — without veihng the face with 
Agamemnon when he slew Iphigenia — in the last two years 
of school-life, in the case of lads who are destined for a 
scientific and not a literary career. Although I am some- 
what of a Hellenist myself, I cannot conceal from myself 
that Greek is, after all, a special subject, and a very difficult 
subject. But Latin should be retained to the end in all 
secondary classical education, for it is connected with us by 
links which cannot be broken, and which, moreover, are ties 
between us and other nations. I admit therefore that 
Greek in the case of some boys might be replaced in the 
.upper classes of a school by science or modern languages, 
and by thus dispensing with Greek in those classes, boys 
destined for a scientific profession would gain four or five 
hours a week. The ideas of Greek acquired in the classes 
below the two upper classes, would be more than sufficient 



132 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

for those careers, into wliicli the student would, moreover, 
enter with a complete French (or English), Latin, and 
philosophical culture. This solution would be far better 
than the total abolition of Latin and Greek with which we 
are now threatened. 

Thus, in virtue of the principles of continuity and grada- 
tion, I strongly advocate the retention of the Latin humani- 
ties as an essential element of the French — or, as I should 
say, the universal — humanities of the present day ; in virtue 
of the principle of progress, which, owing to the increase of 
subjects of knowledge, necessitates some simplifications in 
the intensity of culture, I eliminate Greek from the curri- 
culum of the last two years of school-life ; but from all 
boys I should require a sound knowledge of Latin, of general 
science, and of philosophy. "Without making a breach in 
the continuity of the historical chain, I let one link hang 
more loosely at the end of school-life, a link which has 
increased its distance from us as we progressed, just as 
Hebrew and Sanscrit are in these days too far off to be 
taken into consideration. That part of the Greek language 
and literature which can be assimilated, having passed into 
Latin and its literature, the study of w^hich on the whole is 
easy, a sound training in Latin, with the elements of Greek, 
will be enough to keep the average mind in contact with 
Graeco-Roman antiquity. Besides, in most cases, Greek is 
already merely nominal. It would be far better if a sounder 
knowledge of Greek were required from boys taking up 
literature, and that it should be abridged or simplified to 
the advantage of science, at any rate in the last two years at 
school. But, as I said before, this reasoning does not apply 
to Latin, because Greek is to us a dead language, while 
Latin is still living in the French language and literature, 
and in the traditions and even in the spirit of France ; 
besides, it is the common basis of classical education in all 
countries, and thus plays an additional role as a mark of 
international union. 

And we must impress upon our boys the historical value 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 133 

and necessity of the Latin we compel them to learn. Once 
boys understand it, they can make others understand it in 
their turn. Why is classical education flourishing, as it 
does, in Germany ? Because the opinion of the enlightened 
classes is in its favour ; because the universities pitilessly 
close their doors to all who have not received a sound 
training in Latin ; because the boys themselves can give 
good reasons for their study of antiquity. In France, 
where opinion is perhaps more divided than elsewhere, 
because our mobility in politics tends to become evident in 
the province of education, we do not teach our youth the 
object of a classical training ; that is to say, that to the most 
*' reasoning " youth in the world we give no reason for what 
we compel them to do. Where is there a master who, when 
teaching Latin and Greek, rises to general considerations on 
our intimate connection with antiquity, on the eminently 
national and even patriotic character of the classics, on the 
necessity of our not falling below foreign nations, and of 
maintaining our world-wide renown as a literary and artistic 
people ? Can it be supposed that our youth would continue 
to consider Latin as an incomprehensible drudgery, if they 
were shown its advantages from the point of view not merely 
of their own intellectual progress, but of the great hterary, 
esthetic, and scientific interests of France ? Eecently, on 
the attempt to give physical exercises a more prominent 
position in the schools, appeal was made to patriotic senti- 
ments ; at once our youth was responsive, and eagerly 
began, as required, to enter into games. So if we appeal to 
a boy in the name of his native land to inspire him with an 
ardour for work, he will work. But we do not ; the boy 
who enters the lyceum does not know why he goes to school, 
unless he fancies that he has to get the leaving certificate 
that will be of use to him in this or that profession. We 
put a Latin grammar in his hands. Why ? He is set 
Latin exercises and Latin prose. Why ? He is made to 
learn Greek. Why ? He often learns a living language, as 
often as not without knowing why it has been chosen in 



134 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

preference to any other. Many choose English because they 
have heard it is the easiest. No one enUghtens them or 
their ^^arents when the time for choosing comes. Every- 
thing is left to chance or routine ; everything is done 
because others do it ; as a great mathematician once said 
a proijos of algebraical methods, " Go on, and faith will 
come in time." * Even the very teacher is often quite 
ignorant of the true reason for teaching a subject. He 
teaches grammar because it is his subject, and Latin and 
Greek literature for the same reason ; nor does he think 
any other reason necessary. He uses the same methods that 
were used in his own case — that is what his pedagogy comes 
to. Is it surprising that, for eight or nine years, most boys 
are in the dark as to what is wanted of them, as to the 
object of this " hard labour " in grammar or ancient litera- 
ture ? Is it surprising that, on leaving the lyceum, they are 
unconscious of the advantage that has accrued from their 
training, and that they swell the number of the ungrateful 
who are tm-ning and rending the hand that fed them ? In 
a word, our classical education has no ruling ideas ; it lives 
or vegetates without knowing the reason of its existence ; it 
is unconscious. It is reduced like the hero in the story to 
appeal to custom and usage — "Their laws have made me 
lord and master of this house." f It is incapable of explain- 
ing custom and usage, and that in a country where it is 
more impossible than anywhere else in the world to maintain 
a custom, a tradition, or a law, without giving valid reasons 

* Vide Professor Chrystal, in the preface to vol. ii. of his "Algebra:" 
"Every mathematical book that is worth anything must be read 'back- 
wards and forwards.' If I may use the expres>ion, I would modify 
Lagrange's advice a little and say, * Go on, but often return to strengthen 
your faith.' When you come on a hard or dreary passage, pass it over, 
and come back to it after you have seen its importance, or found the need 
for it further on " (^Tr.). 

t La Fontaine's Fables : " Le chat, la belette, et le jeune lapin." 
" Jean lapin allbgue la coutume et I'usage : 
' Ce sont,' dit-il, ' leurs lois qui m'ont de ce logis 
Rendu maitre et seigneur,' " etc, (IV.)- 



THE CLASSICAL HUMANITIES. 135 

for so doing. Again, the most peremptoiy reasons are often 
powerless to protect what exists against our craze for change. 
It is therefore essential that henceforth classical education 
should be conscious of its moral and national role, and it is 
equally essential that this consciousness should be communi- 
cated to our youth. For that purpose an organization is 
indispensable, which will place before all a definite end, and 
co-ordinate means with respect to that end. I shall en- 
deavour, after a criticism of the " modern humanities," to 
point out the ruling ideas which seem necessary to the 
reform of the ancient humanities. 

To sum up — the classics, which are supposed to be 
*' ancient," should be conceived as national, aiming at the 
maintenance of the national spirit, the national language, 
the national taste, and finally the national influence. Better 
organization is all that is needed to make them — with that 
philosophy which is their indispensable complement — a 
really moral and social training, more necessary in these 
days of democratic nations than heretofore. It was said in 
a full Reichstaclt, a propos of the decrease of the population of 
France, " France is going to the dogs." If France not only 
is ceasing to materially people the world, but also is ceasing 
to spread far and wide her works of art, her books, her 
language, her exquisite products and her good taste, then, 
and then especially, must it be confessed that *' France 
is going to the dogs." Not only is there in classical 
literature and philosophy an ideal fatherland which must 
not be lost from view, but there is also in them a real 
fatherland, a real France, which is ever present therein, to 
know and to love, to make known and to make loved. 



136 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



BOOK IV. 

*' MODERN" EDUCATION" FROM THE 
NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



Secon'daey education is nowadays affected by a kind of 
antinomy, which, at first sight, seems insohible. On the 
one hand, the more complex and varied the national life 
becomes, the more it needs a system of education which will 
maintain its intellectual and moral unity, and also develop 
pubUc spirit. From this point of view, secondary education 
should be unified. On the other hand, the diversity of 
subjects of knowledge and of their professional applications 
goes on increasing ; we must therefore give up trying to 
teach everybody everything. From the second point of 
view, then, a certain variety in accessory subjects seems 
indispensable. The reconciliation of this variety with 
unity is the problem of the day, a problem to which recent 
reforms at the expense of philosophical training afford no 
satisfactory solution. This arises from an inability to 
determine either the fundamental or the accessory part in 
secondary education because of the lack of a true criterion, 
which lies, in my opinion, in the distinction between the 
purely instructive and purely educative subjects which are 
necessary to the maintenance of the national spirit. 

In addition to this, there is a tendency not only to claim 
variety in education — a complete and really classical instruc- 



A *• MODERN" EDUCATION. 137 

tion for some, and ])clo\v that, a more practifjal instruction 
for others — but thej go so far as to claim the final etiuality 
of these varieties, with the same weight attached to each at 
the end of the school course. There is, as it were, a coalition 
to clothe " special " instruction with the classical toga, and 
to make it the equal of a classical training under the name 
of enseignemmtfrangais or " modern humanities." * 

The attitude of the partisans of " modern humanities " to 
the " ancient humanities " is very ambiguous. Some wish 
to destroy the latter, others to preserve them ; and, strange 
to say, by the same means ! When M. Frary plays tlie 
advocate of French and modern languages, we are well 
aware of the thought that is passing through his mind — 
"the latter will kill the former." But there are others, 
on the contrary, who wish to sustain the study of the 
classics (as some one puts it — like the rope that sustains the 
man, and strangles him). They think that classics will 
become the peculiar privilege of "those who have a real 
taste for them." Even men like MM. Greard, Boissier, and 



* For a sketch of the steps by which the way was paved for M. 
Duruy's scheme of '■^ enseignement special" vide Journal of Education, March, 
1891. M. Duruy, following the lines laid down by Cousin and others, 
and keeping in view the commercial, agricultural, and industrial pro- 
fessions, created a system which was not merely parallel to but presently 
a formidable rival of the old classical system. The new system was only 
partially successful, partly because it only solved one part of the problem, 
and partly because, owing to the instinctive tendency of the French 
administration to uniformit3'-, the organization of " special " instruction 
became more and more akin to that of the higher primary instruction ; 
losing its secondary character, and becoming merely that of, say, our higher 
grade schools. The students at the higher primary schools eventually were 
able to obtain the same diplomas as those in the special schools, and after 
some years the teaching staff of the latter schools was actually furnished 
from the normal school supplying the former (Kcole Normale de la rue 
d'Ulm), and, as a natural result, the "special" normal school at Cluny 
collapsed. The reformers who receive in this volume such rough handling 
from M. Fouille'e, propose a new scheme of purely French humanities, 
symmetrical with and on most points equivalent to the old classica] 
system (!>'.). 



138 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

many others, would like to see the classical lyceums reduced 
to twelve or fifteen, so as to create an elite de delicats. 

In reality, the more or less conscious aim of the partisans 
of modern humanities is either the abolition of the ancient 
humanities or their gradual diminution and restriction to 
a smaller and smaller group of individuals, who will be 
consoled for their isolation by the flattering name of elite. 
This aim is the exact opposite of that pursued in Germany, 
England, and Italy, where all are anxious, as far as possible, 
to re-establish the unity of a truly liberal education, while 
an education of inferior rank and of shorter duration is left 
for those who have neither the time nor the means for 
receiving a complete education. Thus we are tending in 
France to level down in our education, whereas in other 
countries they are tending to an hierarchic co-ordination. 
Here is food both for reflection and for anxiety. Is France 
right in an increasing division, parcelling out, and dis- 
organization of her really liberal education, for the pui-pose 
of introducing into it a hitherto unknown utilitarianism ? 
The problem is of genuine national and international interest. 
I shall attempt to show that the solution is as follows : — 

1. To maintain the unity of classical instruction, while 
introduciug into it a certain variety in the way of accessory 
subjects. 

2. To boldly organize an intermediate degree of instruc- 
tion between the primary and classical, not, however, 
equalizing the new system with either of the others lest we 
should compromise both. 

3. To boldly organize a system of professional and 
technical education such as is wanting in France at the 
present moment. 



CHAPTER I. 

UNITY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 

The bifurcation of literature and science under the Empire * 
his been severely criticised, but we are now preparing a 
further bifurcation, more premature, more radical, and 
more irremediable, into a classical and a modern education. 
Now, we cannot without the gravest inconvenience establish 
two different types of instruction, and, declaring them 
equivalent, giYQ them equivalent sanctions. One will 
obviously tend to stifle the other. Let us, however, examine 
the reasons advanced for this division of secondary instruction 
into two distinct and assumedly equal types. 

These reasons, when systematized, reduce to the four 
following : to adapt secondary instruction either to the 
moderate capacity or to slender purses, or to variety of 
aptitudes, or, finally, to variety of theoretical and pro- 
fessional subjects. But adaptation might be effected in 
two ways, either by a diversity of hierarchic degrees in 
instruction, or by a diversity of types assumed to be equal. 
Instead of the former solution, which would be logical, they 
propose the latter, which is self -contradictory. From the 
inequalities in the premisses they imagine that they can 
deduce an equality. In fact, if the first reason is selected, viz. 
the adaptation of instruction to the more moderate intellects, 

* The division of boys after a certain age into two groujis — those who 
were to receive a sound classical training, and those who required a 
♦'special " instruction, mainly in science (2/*.). 



140 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

do not profess to organize a modern training which you 
fancy will be eqnivalent to a training in classics, and which 
will be awarded the same diploma. If the "modern 
humanities " are really more within the grasp of a moderate 
intellect, by what miracle can the final results be " equiva- 
lent " ? And if the modern humanities are adapted to 
slender purses because the course is shorter, how, again, can 
the thesis of final equivalence be maintained ? 

The third reason for the division of secondary instruction 
into two equal types is diversity of aptitudes. But this 
reason, although more specious than the others, is of no 
practical or theoretical value as far as a complete and liberal 
education is concerned. It was urged in the old days for 
the bifurcation of literature and science; now, literary 
aptitude, so far from diminishing the necessity for a scientific 
training, theoretically increases it ; scientific aptitude, so far 
from diminishing the necessity of a literary training, makes 
it more urgent. This theory, therefore, is self -destructive. 
Take a child with more imagination than reasoning power. 
He must, you say, take up literature and not science. I say, 
on the contrary, that the aptitude he lacks must be developed 
in him, and to re-establish equilibrium, he should study the 
general principles of mathematics and physics, as well as of 
literature. We must not turn out men of letters without 
the scientific spirit, nor must we train savants without the 
literary sense, incapable of clearly and elegantly expressing 
their own thoughts. If a boy is unsuited for a really classical 
education, we must find him a place in the " special " schools 
or elsewhere, but we must not aim at placing him on a level 
with the others. The last and most important reason for 
the creation of two distinct types of secondary instruction 
is the increasing diversity of subjects and their applications. 
But no one seems to recognize that the exact opposite would 
be the logical inference. Unity — I do not mean uniformity 

. ^becomes the more necessary in the basis of education, as 

subjects become more numerous and varied. The true liberal 
education is general, disinterested, human, and civic ; there- 



UNITY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 141 

fore, fcbe more specialities are multiplied, the more should 
classical instruction,/?/- those ivlio can afford it, be concen- 
trated on the common basis of the specialities themselves — • 
allowing, of course, for varieties in detail. Besides, it is 
a mere prejudice to suppose that the future doctor should 
receive at school an education so different from that which 
is necessary for the future magistrate or teacher. If we 
look closely at the subjects which are specially necessary 
after leaving school for this or that profession, we shall see 
that either there are no such subjects, or that they are quite 
of secondary importance, and merely require a few altera- 
tions in the science course of the curriculum, or finally, that 
they should only be acquired at a later period by direct and 
special preparation. Every division of classical education 
into really distinct sections is premature specialization ; now, 
all premature specialization is dangerous, and should not be 
admitted into a liberal system of education. The saying 
is true that " a given individual is never one, but several 
individuals.'" Some children first resemble the father, and 
then the mother, and thus successively represent " a series 
of types distinct both morally and physically." We cannot 
therefore flatter om'selves that we can lay hold of the man 
in his final aspect either in the child or even in the youth ; 
"we can never therefore foresee all the possibilities in a 
character, all the aptitudes it will develop. Hence the 
danger of all education which prejudges too hastily the 
tendencies of the child. The only object of instruction 
should be to awaken aptitudes, and never to respond to 
aptitudes supposed to exist. Without this, it is a mutilation 
"from which a whole life may suffer. Once again, it is not 
a fixed and crystallized individual that the educator has to 
deal with ; it is the shifting series of individuals, a fcnnihj 
in the moral sense of the word, as well as in the sense in 
which it is taken in natural history." * The division into 
"Latin classical" and "French classical" instruction will 

* Guyau, " Education and Heredity," pp. 248, 249. 



142 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

oblige lads on entering school-life to make a choice with 
regard to which thej have not the necessary information, 
and which, if unfortunate, will work irreparable mischief. 
Such a boy will say, " I want to be a doctor," and later on 
will discover that he wants to be an engineer ; " I want to 
be a great merchant or a large farmer," and will eventually 
prefer the law. "What is more difficult for a young man 
than the choice of a profession ? * The results of an un- 
fortunate choice are betrayed either by discoura.s^ement or 
by sterile effort. Inferiority in every career lowers the 
quality and the market value ; and thus ensues a disastrous 
competition with the talents and aptitudes which have found 
their true bent ; society is therefore as interested as the 
individual in ensuring that each of its members should use 
his true faculties. If we think of the waste of productive 
force and of the frequently fatal coQsequences of a lack of 
discernment in the choice of a profession, it will be recog- ' 
nized that no question is more worthy of profound con- 
sideration, and that any solution would be immature when 
circumstances do not require immediate choice. But few 
children evince very early for a profession a preference which 
is afterwards justified ; in most cases they are guided by 
caprice, by momentary enthusiasm, or by a friend's example ; 
or they remain in uncertainty, and then give in to their 
parents' wishes, which are governed by considerations of 
opportunity, and very often the parents are as little en- 
lightened as their children. We have all known ca^es of 
men taking up a profession for which they have no aptitude. 

* I know very intimately a man whose studies were all arranged with 
a view to one pi'ofession, and who in his last year chose another — teaeh- 
in2;. Even as a teacher, he began with a class in rhetoric, and 
prepared pupils for examinations in literature. Then, when the examina- 
tions in philosophy were re-established, he changed again, and this time 
he thought he had really found his forte. Later on, his work in Greek, 
with the examinations in view, enabled him to "Platonize" and "Socra- 
tize" as he pleased. Why should we wish to confine young people to 
^fcience, to classics, or to " French classical instruction " ? No one caa 
foresee the future. 



UNITY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 143 

This is because, as far as the choice of a profession is con- 
cerned, humanity is as yet unable to avail itself of auy but 
the most cliildish proocsses of selection.* Secondary instruc- 
tion should therefore be organized so as to develop all the 
faculties which will be equally indispensable to the engineer, 
the doctor, the banker, the lawyer, or the farmer. After a 
sound fundamental training in literature, science, and philo- 
sophy, we can choose a profession, and our choice will be 
an enlightened choice. And if our general knowledge is 
sound, the more technical subjects can then be readily 
mastered. 

As a safeguard of national unity, our classical instruction 
must be luiified and animated by one spirit. In the two 
last years of school-life it only admits of a few "equivalents" 
— to which I shall come later on — in quite secondary points 
and in details ; and here again these equivalents must be 
real, rigorously laid down, and rigorously limited. They 
will have a value not so much qualitative as quantitative, 
i.e. they will bear upon the greater or smaller amount of 
particular instruction and particular subjects to be acquired, 
and not upon the studies which, from the standpoint of 
individual education and of national progress, are charac- 
teristic of secondary instruction. 

I^^ow, another question arises. What should be the 
extent of a classical and really liberal education with respect 
to the whole population of a country ? i.e. for how many 
individuals should it be provided 1 Generally speaking, 
they are those who by their rank or profession will be among 
the governing classes. Now, this class varies with the 
country and the form of government. It is evidently larger 
in democracies, where the direction of the national move- 
ment is no longer with the nobility, but with the rich and 
leisured middle classes. In France, therefore, secondary 
education should be provided for all those who have time 
and money to enjoy a classical training. Of course, a certain 

* Tide, on this point, M. H. Etienne, " Du Discernement dans le choiy 
des professions.'* 



144 EDUCATION FKOai A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

average capacity will still persist, but absolute incapacity is 
extremely rare. 

Those who, contrary to this principle, wish to restrict 
a liberal education to a small minority, are pleading the 
interests either of the classical training itself, or of the 
industrial, agricultural, and commercial professions. 

With regard to the interests of classical education and 
the true literary or scientific " callings," it is in my opinion 
a complete misconception to restrict a classical training to 
a smaller and smaller minority, under the pretence of foster- 
ing their interests and that of a classical training, and 
leaving the majority to utilitarian pursuits. What "calling " 
could hold its ground in the face of a general lowering of 
standards, of State indifference, of the increasing rarity of 
classical lyceums, or of the increasing facilities in every 
lyceum for leaving off Latin, Greek, and philosophy ? Many 
would be called and few chosen. Under the pretence of 
artificially forming an elite, of making a selection, natural 
development would be checked. Ninety-nine hundredths of 
our boys (except in so far as ecclesiastical establishments 
might fill the gap) would be deprived of schools inciting to 
the really literary, philosophical, and even scientific pro- 
fessions, for the scientific "calling" almost always begins 
with being literary and classical.* Selection only comes into 

* In the communal schools half the boys are already receiving this 
*' ispecial " instruction; and the proportion in the lyceums is ten thousand out 
of forty-four thousand. M. Boissier is of opinion that even this proportion 
is too small, and would have it reversed. "Ten thousand boys would 
be enoueh to provide for the liberal pi'ofessions." But is the only object 
of a liberal education to be provision for the \\\>&\'3\ professions'? Does 
it not serve to develop a liberal spirit^ which is equally if not more neces- 
sarv in the professions of industry, agriculture, and commerce, than in 
functions more particularly called liberal ? Is it not, as I have just 
pointed out, our middle classes that, in their capacity as the governing 
class, should be raised above an exclusive utilitarianism and realism ? It 
is also proposed to establish the " special " or " French " system in all the 
communal schools. Now, "if we start," says M. Breal, " from the men 
who are a credit to their country in science, letters, politics, etc., we shall 
find out that at least one-half were educated in the communal schools.** 



UNITY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 145 

operation when there is a wide field and vast numbers ; 
under the pretence of diminishing the so-called "dry husks'* 
of classical instruction, the ripe fruit will be checked in its 
growth ; in fact, it is just as if we wished to keep down the 
number of trees in a forest, because, forsooth, many flowers 
and fruits fall to the ground before they are ripe. Is it 
not by repeated and more or less fruitful attempts that 
Nature succeeds in her masterpieces ? This scientific law is 
misunderstood by all those who wish to restrict a liberal 
education, under the pretext of its beiug to the advantage 
of an elite. The true method consists in, not mutilating and 
lowering the status of certain subjects, but in pruning the 
lower branches of the tree, in lopping off all historical, 
geographical, pseudo-scientific, and pseudo-literary rubbish, 
— everything that is mere erudition, mere matter of memory, 
mere detail, and specializing. 

The organizers of the association promoting the reform 
of secondary education reproach a classical training " with 
turning young Frenchmen from industrial pursuits, and 
with attracting them in too large a proportion to the public 
service, or to professions already overstocked ; " with 
creating " too many beggars and too many of the discon- 
tented and unclassed." Nowadays it is fashionable to in- 
veigh against the unclassed, who, as a senator recently said, 
might have made good manufacturers or merchants. But 
is it from classical scholars that the " unclassed " are to be 
feared ? It is not from the " unclassed " middle classes 
that social dangers will arise, but rather from the "un- 
classed" artisans and labourers, whose numbers will be 

There is also a practical objection to the proposed reform : youths who 
have literary tendencies, or who wish to devote themselves to a liberal 
career, will no longer have schools at hand where they can receive a real 
classical training. Numbers of careers will be checked if boys have to go 
to Paris, Lyons, or Bordeaux for a classical training. I know numbers of 
eminent men who, under the proposed regime, would have been quite 
unable to reach the high rank they have attained in the teaching pro- 
fessions, in literature, or in modern philosophy. The only institutious 
likely to profit by the reform are the ecclesiastical schools. 



146 EDUCATION FFwOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

increased as the system of " French instruction " is popu- 
larized. A few briefless barristers or schoolmasters out of 
work do not constitute a peril to the State. If six thousand 
young girls are annually candidates for forty-five places as 
mistresses, is that the fault of Latin ? is it the fault of a 
sound classical training ? Unclassing is due to the 
exaggerated importance attached to science in all stages of 
instruction. The predominance of science, of modern 
languages, and of the mother tongue means the predomi- 
nance of memoriter work and consequent over-pressure ; at 
the same time, it encourages all persons of moderate abili- 
ties, for they say, *'I shall soon know botany, anatomy, 
geography, history, French, and even English or German ; 
it is only a matter of time and patience ! " The more the 
quantity of knowledge to be acquired increases in the various 
programmes, under the pretence of eliminating a certain 
number of competitors, the more is the crowd of competitors 
encouraged whose only hope is to learn by heart by a fixed 
date, chemical nomenclature, dates of battles in French 
history, all the important towns in the United States, with 
their population, industries, and commerce, etc. Hence, the 
substitution of a passive storing up of knowledge for active 
methods and personal exertion, far from bringing about the 
selection in view, is bound to issue in an ever-increasing 
chaos of pretension and unjustified ambition.* 

The way to get rid of these numerous and notorious 
mediocrities is not to manufacture a syllabus suited to their 
capacities, but to require from them the impossible, i.e. 
really personal mental exertion, and to abolish scientific, 
historical, and geographical summarizing ; mere memory 

* The real reason so many young men have of recent years taken the 
baccalaure'at is that thereby they get off with voluntary service in the 
army for one year. Since this was possible, large numbers of com- 
munal schools have raised the general standard in order to be able to 
prepare for this examination, and large numbers of young men have gone 
through the course prescribed. With more intelligence on the part of the 
authorities, more advantage might be taken of this stimulus. 



TJXITY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 147 

work, and the practical and mechanical exercises in modern 
lano'naii'es, which the most ordinary student), if driven hard 
enough by his master, can eventually do indifferently well. 
Place all students of moderate capacity under a regime of 
active method, of sound composition in Latin and their 
mother tongue, of accurate and literary translation, and they 
will very soon have had quite enough of it. It is only 
natural that the longing to do what one is not adapted for 
should not be of long duration ; with every effort much 
above the average the desire will grow weaker ; at most only 
regret will be felt, and even then we may safely say that the 
incapacity was not absolute. If during nine years' school- 
life, daily work and effort in thinking and writing are 
necessary for self-knowledge, and for seeing clearly for one's 
self instead of asking this one or that one for information — 
well ! no myopic or incapable student will persist so long ; 
and the rising tide of candidates for the final examinations 
will soon be on the ebb. In class, as long as it is only a 
question of listening to a master for three quarters of an 
hour, of taking a few notes in history and geography, of 
sitting out an experiment in physics, of repeating the usual 
nuu-iber of German or English words, all the pupils seem 
equally satisfied ; this is the regular routine of the passive 
method ; but w^hen the days of school-life are spent at 
French, Latin, and philosophy, all is different. The boys 
towards the top of the class are excited and animated ; this 
is the important side of school -life to them. As for the 
others, their faces are long, yawning and eniiui are their 
lot ; they would give a good deal to be well out of the 
lyceum. When we are trying to make these empty heads 
think for themselves, they are generally dreaming of the 
day they wiU leave school. Therefore it is to be desired 
that, whatever happens, the only work required from them 
should be the only profitable work — personal work, instead 
of practising, as we do, on a large scale, scientific, historical, 
geographical, and linguistic psittacism. This would be the 
surest way of making a whole nation intelligent from the 



148 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

top to the bofctom of the ladder, and of seeing that each 
individual is placed in the category which is assigned him 
by his mental capacity. 

The association for the reform of secondary education 
puts in the front rank of its programme those professions 
which make the " material prosperity of a nation," but there 
is no mention of that intellectual and moral prosperity, or of 
that literary and scientific greatness, without which, indeed, 
no nation can be either powerful or influential, and without 
which even its industries cannot exist and prosper for long. 
They are evidently inspired in this programme by M. 
Frary's economic doctrine. He divides the professions into 
the productive and unproductive, and then classes among 
the latter magistrates, teachers, writers, doctors, and artists. 
These men "add nothing to the wealth of the country." 
So Hugo, Pasteur, Claude Bernard, Trousseau, and Nelaton 
are unproductive and " parasites " ! Those who build rail- 
ways are productive, but the inventors of railroads are 
unproductive. So the confessed aim of education is to be 
material and economic utility — ^in a word, the production of 
wealth. Well ! even from this false and narrow point of 
view the theory is untenable, for the very professions stamped 
as " sterile " are precisely those which contribute most to 
the scientific, industrial, and commercial supremacy of a 
nation. Germany, which they give us as a model, is a 
country of professors, of savants, of men of erudition, of 
writers, etc. To suppose that a nation can prosper without 
the movement of lofty scientific and literary speculation, is 
to forget the most elementary truths of history and political 
economy.* 

* In 1880 there was an attempt to introduoe three cycles into classical 
instruction — primary, intermediate, and higher secondary instruction — 
each stage to be complete in itself. So, to encourage parents to send their 
children to the lyceums, they gave them the option of withdrawing them 
at the end of every three years, always with a " complete instruction of 
its kind." Nowadays this association trumpets a similar system, further 
aggravated by bifurcation. First cycle : French instruction, called 



UNITY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 149 

But does this imply that no attention should be paid to 
the manufacturing, agricultural, and commercial professions ? 
No ; but young men destined for these professions may be 
divided into two categories : First, those who are well off 
and able to look forward to the higher lines of manu- 
facturing or commercial life, in which, I repeat, the liberal 
spirit is every whit as necessary as in the acknowledged 
" liberal " professions. Young people in this category may 
and ought to receive a complete and classical training. In 
what way can it be injurious to them 1 Because it does not 
give a sufficiently prominent position to science ,? But we 
clearly understand that a good liberal education will require 
from every pupil a sound knowledge of mathematics and 
physics ; for all other sciences the choice is left between the 
various applied sciences. Is it not enough to approach 
technical subjects when the whole time is free ? The future 
head of a sugar-rehnery or of a great dyeing business will 
have plenty of time for his chemistry. The future head of 
a manufactory will have time to pursue the study of 

secondary, but really primary, with the addition of inodern languages, 
but no Latin or Greek. Second cycle : about the age of twelve or thirteen 
a solemn decision is taken like that of Hercules between the two ways. But 
three ways are offered : classics for those who have the courage to devote 
themselves to them and wish to pursue that study for some years ; modern 
humanities; and finally scientific humanities, into w^hich the mass of the 
students will throng. In other words, three distinct sections ; or, strictly 
S{)eaking, more than three, for they tell us that higher secondary education 
''would be ramified according to requirements and resources" into 
"several branches preparatory for the faculties, into great literary or 
scientific schools, and into the higher schools of commerce and agricul- 
ture." This would be specialization with a vengeance, from fourteen 
years of age onwards, that is to say, M. Fortoul's bifurcation raised to 
I do not know what ])0wer, superadded to the cycles of 1880. And then 
they conclude as follows: "This community of education would be the 
safeguard of the unity of society ! " 

In fact, we are threatened with the progressiA'e parcelling out of 
classical instruction, and the progressive elevation of utilitarian to the 
rank of liberal instruction. It follows that, on the one hand, classics will 
be lowered, and, on the other hand, no really professional and practical 
system will be organized. 



150 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDrOINT. 

meclianics * And how can we at the Ijceum enter into the 
subject of dyeing or weaving ? We can only give a sound 
general instruction, not merely scientific, but literary and 
philosophical. If means do not permit, a student will 
simply refuse this training. And even in the case of those 
young men whose means are limited, and who have to go 
out early into life, a sound general training is still necessary, 
although not so extended in scope, requiring fewer years for 
completion, and in fact inferior to the other. This want is 
filled by the German ReaJschuU to which the "special" 
instruction in France should correspond.f 

The programme of modern humanities is a tissue of con- 
tradictions. They say there are too many humanists, and 
yet they wish to create new humanities for the majority. 
There are too many applicants for posts in the public 
service, and yet they wish to increase the numbers of the 
throng by manufacturing humanities at " contract prices.'* 
There are too many " bachelors," and yet they are going to 
create a fresh haccalaureat of French classical instruction — 
simply to humour the vanity of parents and children — ■ 
easier than its predecessors, and giving, as is intended, the 
same privileges as the existing degree, opening the same 
careers, giving access to the public service and to State 
schools, and finally, arousing the ambition of every student. 
If there are too many "bachelors," why not make the 
examination more severe in those points connected with the 
foundations of the humanities ? why not establish severe 

* M. Maneuvrier, an old boy at the Ecole Normale, is, I believe, at the 
head of a great manufactory, which does not prevent him from writing 
remarkable books on education, M. Dezeimeiris, an excellent Greek 
scholar, and a correspon<lent of the Acc.demie des inscriptions et des hel'es 
lettres, recently showed the Minister of Agriculture, in his vineyard at 
Bordelais, the effect of rational pruning on the phylloxera. Greek does 
not therefore prevent <' vine-culture." Mr. Roby is an example of this in 
England (Jr.). 

t Special in its object, this system would be also general in the sense 
that it would be content with general notions on the different manufactur- 
ing and agricultural professions, without thereby being so detailed as to be 
technical. 



UNITY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION. 151 

pass examinations in the lyccum, and thus eliminate the 
idle and the incapable ? That is the real remedy. Nor is 
this all ; we hear of true modern " humanities," of a 
"liberal" edncition apart from all professional require- 
ments, having all the characteristics of a classical trainin,2^, 
with the same end of " mental culture " in view ; and in 
the next breath we hear that agriculture, manufactures, and 
commerce are all kept in view. These statements have to 
be reconciled. And besides, in what respect will modern 
humanities be a better preparation for the professions, if, as 
is said, these humanities can only give a really general 
culture, classical in fact, and "in no way special and pro- 
fessional " ? Is ignorance of Latin and the substitution of 
German and Enghsh exercises a sufficient guarantee of 
preparation for commerce, of the acquisition of the genius 
of commerce and agTiculture ? " Oh ! but we shall include 
book-keeping in the programme." What ! is the unity of 
secondary instruction to be sacrificed to book-keeping ? is 
your so-called general culture to be subordinated to the 
requirements of an office or of a bank ? If you are in such 
a hurry to teach your children book-keeping— which can be 
learned in a few weeks — let them have special lessons in 
keeping accounts, or let them have a complementary course 
at the lyceum. Let us look a little closer at the programme 
of our present special instruction, which has a better claim 
than " modern humanities " as a preparation for industrial, 
commercial, and agricultural life, and let us see in what it 
prepares for it. Classical instruction contains all that is 
comprised in special instruction. In both programmes there 
is the same course of French literature, literary history, 
general history, geography, mathematics, mechanics, physics, 
chemistry, natural history, and modern languages. Nothing 
is wanting but the elements of political economy, law, and 
book-keeping. Classical instruction is therefore more justi- 
fied than Fontaine's hero in saying — 

" S'il en faut faire autaut afin que I'ou me flatte^ 
Cela u'est pas bieu malaise." 



152 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

As for the programmes of French instruction put forward, 
there is nearly as great a medley of the different subjects as 
in the present classical programmes. With the exception of 
a few differences in detail in the proportion of the different 
sciences, the science subjects appear in the same order as 
in the classical course. The only essential difference is the 
substitution of a second modern language for Latin. So we 
are saved by adding Goethe's "Faust" to Shakespeare's 
" Hamlet," instead of the " ^neid " ! And for this mag- 
nificent result secondary education is to be turned upside 
down, classical training is to be disorganized, and to be 
asphyxiated by a rarefication of its environment. Instead 
of all learning Latin and one modern language chosen by 
themselves, our children will learn a fundamental modern 
language and a complementary modern language. 

What essential diversity of aptitudes will be thus satisfied ? 
What minds are unsuited to Latin and English, and suited 
to German and English ? I repeat that the whole system 
of modern humanities is a mass of contradictions — it is a 
general, special, a disinterested utilitarian system of instruc- 
tion. Your so-called classical instruction, like the bat in 
the fable, can say, " I am general, liberal, literary, and 
poetical, — look at my wings ! I am special, industrial, 
commercial, agricultural, — look at my feet 1 " 



CHAPTER II. 

MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE. 

The corner-stone of the edifice that our reformers are on 
the point of constrncting is instruction in modern languages. 
" Now that modern idioms are crystallized, why should they 
not be substituted for the dead languages ? " In this 
summary manner the question is solved by a simple query, 
without any reference to history or the essential elements of 
our national literature and of our national spirit. They 
quite forget that there are not merely pedagogic, but 
historical and patriotic, reasons why France, a neo-Latiu 
nation, largely owing to its connection with Latin literature 
the hereditary qualities of its own tongue, of its own litera- 
ture, of its taste, of its national art, and of its national 
spirit, does not sever its last hnk with classical antiquity by 
the sacrifice of Latin in the instruction of the " lettered " 
classes. I have shown in the preceding pages that the 
simultaneous study of Latin and French is the means of 
intellectual and assthetic education most appropriate to the 
spirit of our youth. Finally, I showed that there were 
international reasons ; when Germany and England retain 
with jealous care not only Latin but Greek, it would be 
imprudent from the patriotic point of view to launch our 
secondary education on such an adventurous career, to take 
away its historical "hinge," so to speak, its traditional 
unity, and at the same time its bond of kinship with other 
countries. To counterbalance such grave considerations as 
these, the study of modern languages must offer exceptional 
advantages. Let us now examine their real educative value. 



154 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

I shall, first of all, lay down the principle that there are 
two ways of learning a language — the literary, and the 
utilitarian. In the first case we do not propose to sp3ak 
the language, and therefore do not propose to remember 
words in common use ; we treat it as the language of poets, 
which the majority hear and do not speak. In other words, 
we study it as an object of art. What is of importance, 
then, is not so much the usual sense of words, or the real 
and sometimes common things they express, but the literary 
value of the terms and their associations, and therefore the 
ideas and human sentiments they express. In art and 
literature expression is everything, words of themselves are 
of no account. The literary study of a language is not a 
mere instrument of hnowledge, but an instrument of art, 
of conception, of style, and therefore of intellectual and 
aesthetic education. They propose in this new system to 
teach the modern languages as literature ; but, in the first 
place, who will teach them ? Foreigners who are but little 
conversant with the subtleties of the French language, or 
Frenchmen as little conversant with foreign languages. 
Besides, in instruction in modern languages, the tendency to 
utilitarianism is almost irresistible. English and German 
are too contemporary in character, too commercial and 
industrial to easily become objects of aesthetic taste and 
pure literature. The temptation to utilitarianism will be 
universal and incessant. The fact is that modern languages 
are only learned so that the learner may speak them, that is, 
they are learned for a practical purpose. This difficult task 
will absorb all their efforts, and after learning modern 
languages some eight or nine years, what do our boys from 
the lyceums know ? A teacher of English or German has so 
many pupils in a class and so many classes to teach that it 
is impossible for him to teach English or German to such a 
number, nor can he even teach them to read those languages 
fluently. The result is that our boys know no more English 
or German than they know of Latin or Greek. All that can 
be done or ought to be done is to give them a sound 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITEHATURE. 155 

grammatical training, and familiarize them with the ordinary 
vocabulary of the language, so that they can take up the 
subject more seriously when compelled to do so. They can 
only learn how to speak it, in fact, after residence abroad, 
or by daily intercourse with foreigners.* The net result is 
that the literary study of Latin will have been sacrificed for 
a knowledge of foreign languages that will be neither 
literary nor commercial. Neither Apollo nor Mercury will 
be satisfied. 

If we read M. Bossert's report on the instruction in 

modern languages, we shall recognize that they cannot be 

"equivalent" to the classics in education. According to 

M. Bossert, the first point is pronunciation. From the 

beginning the spoken word " must always precede the written 

word." First the teacher says to his class father or vater, 

and makes a few, " or even all the boys together," repeat it 

mechanically after him. Then and only then is the word 

written on the blackboard. In words of several syllables 

they are to master the accentuated syllable first, because it 

is the " soul " of the word, the only part that foreigners lay 

stress upon. " From the master's lips " the boy must learn to 

read. Besides, the ball is set rolling with the learning of 

common and familiar words. Then exercises, practical 

exercises, are " essential ; " translation into French is of 

secondary moment, because here "no longer German and 

English, but the mother tongue, is the object in view." 

Then they must tiy to " converse " in English and German. 

In a word, the object of this " classical " instruction is the 

" conversation manual," which will become the Bible of the 

modern lyceums. " Few people in these days will maintain," 

says M. Bossert, " that Latin is learned for the purpose of 

improving our knowledge of French" — a narrow and, in my 

opinion, a disputable statement. " If the same rule were to 

be applied to modern languages," he continues, " it would 

be far better to banish them from the curriculum." This 

* Such residfince is almost necessary for a boy destined for the higher 
paths of commerce, etc. 



156 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

good advice is worth noting. One of two things will happen : 
either the boys will learn to speak and read the modern 
languages fluently, and then the fluent reading of foreign 
texts will have no greater pedagogic value than the reading 
of works in the mother tongue ; or, the boys will treat the 
moderu languages as they treat the dead languages, and, 
then, what is the gain ? " Yes, what ! " says M. Bossert, 
"ploughing laboriously through the conjugations and de- 
clensions of the Grermanic languages, learning one's bearings 
in the wilderness of construction, in the thick parts of a 
vocabulary, to find at the end of all this labour nothing 
more than a new term of comparison with the mother 
tongue ! That would certainly be, in Shakespeare's phrase, 
* Much ado about nothing.'" And all this woald only teach 
you one language. You cannot hope to know at once Eng- 
lish for the sake of reading Shakespeare, German for Goethe, 
Italian for Dante, and Spanish for Cervantes. Why, then, 
give up the languages and the literature from which the 
French language and literature have sprung ? If there are 
any nations who ought not to banish Latin from secondary 
education, the neo-Latin races should certainly not, prepared 
as they are by their own language to assimilate Latin. 

There is much astonishment and lamentation that foreign 
languages are so little known and used in France. In 
Germany, they say, French is studied to some purpose from 
the commencement of school-life, and English from the 
time the boy reaches the fourth class from the bottom of the 
school. Yes I but that is because Latin prepares the 
Germans for the study of French (the language nearest to 
the classics), while German itself makes the study of English 
easier. Similarly, the English boy who has learned Latin 
easily picks up French, and finds it no great effort to learn 
German. In France, on the contrary, how difficult it is to 
learn German and English ! Latin, however, offers us no 
great difficulties. Italian and Spanish, which are of very 
little use to us, Avould be as easy to us as French is to 
Italians and Spaniards. It is not so long ago since men of 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE. 157 

letters and the clergy spoke Latin, which proves that it is a 
language that can be easily acquired. There is no reason, 
therefore, for suppressing Latin because it is very difficult, 
to replace it by German and English which present almost 
as much difficulty as Greek. 

The facility with which children learn a language, and 
learn it without the grammar, has been much exaggerated. 
No doubt, if a child is entrusted to a foreign nurse or to a 
foreign governess it is natural enough that it should pick up 
the ordinary words and phrases that are necessary to under- 
stand others and to be understood ; but that is almost all 
the child does, and it will not go much further. Do you 
expect, M. Frary was asked, to supply the lyceums with 
English and German nurses ? A child only learns a foreign 
language as it learns its mother tongue — if it is compelled 
to do so by necessity. If you do not place boys at school in 
this situation, in all but a few very rare exceptions you will 
be unable to teach them to speak English and German well — 
unless, indeed, you call the use of a hundred or so of words 
and current phrases speaJcing a language. And what is the 
intellectual value of such periodic repetition ? * 

I may add that modern languages do not constitute a 

* According to Dr. Lebon, a well-known traveller, familiar with 
modern languages (and moreover hostile to a chissical training), modern 
languages shouUl only be attempted early in childhood or at the latter end 
of school-life. "The study of modern languages," he says, "m no way 
exercises the intellect, but contributes a means of acquiring the knowledge 
we should possess. The child learns them unconsciously when in contact 
with foreigners. If he cannot learn them at that age, they should be 
referred to the end of his education. By methods from which dictionaries 
and grammars were rigorously excluded, and which I have on several 
occasions ascertained to be efficacious, any one in a few months can learn 
to read a language fluently, while English and German, if taught as Latin 
and Greek are, with dictionary or grammar, for eight or nine years at 
school, leave ninety-five boys out of a hundred unable at the end of their 
course to read an English or German newspaper." It is much to be desired 
that Dr. Lebon would give us further information as to the expeditious 
method of which he speaks, for it is impossible iu the University to learn 
languages from early childhood. 



158 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

unified system of instruction because they differ, not only in 
nature, but in utility. The languages useful to savants 
are : (1) Grerman ; (2) English. The literary languages 
are: (1) English;* (2) Italian; and (3) German.f The 
commercial languages most useful to the French are : (1) 
English ; (2) Spanish. It follows that modern languages 
are an object of special courses of study essentially varying 
with the end in view, and therefore accessory and sub- 
ordinated to more fundamental subjects. Imagine the 
anarchy that would ensue where some learned English, others 
German, others Spanish, others Italian, others Arabic — it 
would be a regular Tower of Babel. And yet the boy must, 
on entering school-life, choose one of these modern languages 
without knowing with any certainty whether it is the 
language he will require in later years. 

In fact, the German and English literatures, however 
admirable they may be, have not, in general, the classical 
qualities, and are especially deficient in those qualities which 
harmonize with the qualities of the French race. Imagina- 
tion in its freest, most capricious, widest, and most unbridled 
expression is predominant in them. And with this imagina- 
tion is conjoined passion — violent and brutal passion. Look 
at Shakespeare. There is far too much inequality, and in 
his noblest work far too much profundity and subtlety, far 
too little juvenility for oar young people. Dante is too 
subtle and too passionate ; Goethe is too scientific and 
makes too much display of his science. They are therefore 
not classical to French children. There is only a century 
of German literature, and it is somewhat forced, exhibiting 
a kind of pedantry in sentiments and ideas. Born in the 
struggle against foreign inflaence, it is still animated by the 
spirit of that struggle. It is, as M. Darmesteter rightly 
says, the creation of patriot^s who said, " We want a poetry 



* Three centuries of masterpieces — Spenser to Shakespeare ; Milton to 
Poj)e ; Burns to Byron and Shelley. 

f Only one century of rather artificial literature. 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE. 159 

of our own." German literature, like Germany itself, is 
a product of volition, and it is unfortunate that tlie heart of 
Germany should beat with such a sentiment. " The real 
poetry of Germany has found a refuge in its philosophy — ■ 
' Faust ' — and in its music," * 

We are told that we shall find in modern literature " a 
purer and more refined morality than in our own." f But 
is it so certain that Shakespeare is not so coarse as Virgil ? 
And however admirable may be, for example, the episode of 
Francesca in the " Inferno," or rather, exactly because it is 
so admirable, is a poetic picture of love suitable reading for 
the young ? Will the sight of Paolo and Francesca carried 
off to eternal torment, clasped for ever in each other's arms, 
be enough to inspire the young with a dread of hell, or with 
a horror of forbidden passion ? If we glance over the 
official programmes of modern languages, it will be seen that 
education by modern languages means education by novels. 
Here are all Walter Scott's novels, with all their countless 
heroines, " at the option of the candidate," as the programme 
puts it ; here are . " David Copperfield," " A Christmas 
Carol," " Nicholas Nickleby," " The Yicar of Wakefield," 
** Silas Maruer," "The Mill on the Floss," and "Adam 
Bede ; " ' Auerbach's " Professor's Wife," Freytag's " Soil 
und Haben," etc. The laws of suggestion are nowadays 
recognized and placed on a scientific footing ; these stories 
of love and seduction with their long train of heroines, from 
the lovely Jewess in " Ivanhoe," to Marguerite in " Faust," 
are a continual " suggestion," especially when the scene is laid, 
not in the improbable realm of mythology, but in our ovm. 
modern environment, in the street where the students in 
" Faust " run after the girls, in Marguerite's bedchamber, 
or at Hetty's rendezvous. A mother will not place "Faust" 
in the hands of her child without uneasiness. If we want 

* The German language is yet in a nebulous state; its forms are 
not precise enough, its rules are not sufficiently accurate, nor are its 
limits clearly enough defined. 

t " Bulletin de rAssociation pour la reforme de I'Enseignement." 



160 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

to respect the natural and peaceful evolution of youthful 
faculties, we must continue our demand for a sound and 
simple instruction based upon the broad and noble ideas of 
Tacitus, or Cicero, or Yirgil, instead of introducing children 
■ — as M. Lockroy proposed when he was Minister of Public 
Instruction — to the most complex literatures of civilization, 
and placing in their hands " Shakespeare, Tennyson, and 
Shelley," whom the English themselves scarcely understand.* 
The study of modern literatures — tempestuous and passionate 
as they are — is not only but moderately healtliy for minds 
in tlie process of formation, but it would have a very un- 
fortunate effect upon the preservation of the original 
qualities of the French language, which are mainly Latin. 
It is wise to furnish a young man with forms of language 
and style more stable than those of our own days, in which 
school succeeds school with startling rapidity, according to 
the fashion, or the philosophical system in favour ; in this 
tempest, as it were, we are running the risk of losing pure 
French; our language may lose its beautiful lucidity and 
intellectual transparency. There is already quite enough 
fermentation in French literature ; we have symbolists 
and extreme naturalists in plenty, without precipitating the 
dissolution of our literature by an education which is a 
medley of English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic. 
Painters, sculptors, and musicians are not trained by the 
study of the most recent and most refined works of art, but 
by the study of those that afford the most classical qualities 
of form, style, and composition. Without these funda- 

* During the life of Robert Browning a society was formed in England, 
having as its president Furnival, the eminent philologist, for the object of 
explaining and interpreting Browning. The Rev. T. P. Kirkman, in his 
inaugural address, became unintentionally epigrammatic when he divided 
the poet's works into two classes — those thiit are understood and those not 
understood. " Where Browning is obscure, it is from excess of light." 
Tennyson, too, though alive, has his scholiasts and commentators, who 
study what is obscure in him, and delight in the unintelligible. But the 
French need no scholiasts as yet for pieces like Victor Hugo's " La Bouche 
d'Ombre." 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE, 161 

mental qualities there can be no great art, and on these all 
else should be grafted. We must study Raphael and Da 
Vinci, Bach and Mozart, Phidias and Praxiteles. When the 
education of artists abandons this tradition, our superiority 
in art and in artistic industries will very soon have vanished. 
When the literary classes abandon Latin, our literary glory 
will soon have passed away. 

It has been asserted that a classical education is "an 
education of old men." On the contrary, education by men 
of modern literature, by Goethe, Heine, Byron, Shelley, 
De Mussct, will make our youth old before its time, and will 
turn out young men who are not young, who are disillusioned, 
refined, subtle, and sceptical — in a word, decadents. Youth 
is only to be found in young, simple, and straightforward 
literatures, not in those that have grown old and complex, of 
which the real value escapes those who have had no classical 
training. So in music, which are young, — Wagner, Chopin, 
Schumann, or Bach, Haydn, and Mozart ? Will a child 
understand the deep melancholy of Schumann or Chopin ? 
If he does he is to bo pitied. Far better to bring up our 
youth in the serene school of those who are called "the old 
masters," and who are in reality the young. In ah things 
it is best to begin at the beginning. 

Some people beheve that the classical spirit can be suffi- 
ciently communicated by translations ; this also is a mistake. 
Translations are better than nothing for the weaker sex, who 
only receive the education of " amateurs," but young lads 
whose edtication is essentially active, must translate for them- 
selves ; the labour of translation is of more importance than 
the text translated. Partisans of the system of translations 
imagine that the important thing is the intrinsic value and 
the subject-matter of the " ^neid," or of the " Epistles " 
of Horace ; but what is a translation of the " ^neid," and 
how is it superior to any modern work ? The value oi 
classical works lies in their execution, in their fundamental 
simplicity, and in their perfection of form. Depth and 
form are absolutely inseparable in them, and it is precisely 
13 



162 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

because of those characteristics that these works are classical. 
Virgil translated is but a tenth-rate poet. Translations 
should be used by the teacher as a complement to the 
personal exertion of the pupils on fragmentary passages, to 
give them an idea of the whole, but the systematic and 
regular substitution of translations for texts would be a 
bastardizing of classical studies. Where translations are all 
that is required is in the modern languages they propose 
to substitute for the dead languages. In modern Avorks, 
depth is of more account than form, and up to a certain 
point is of itself enough. In prose, the modern " classics " 
which figure on the programmes are nearly ah novels ; now, 
we may as well read " Soil und Haben " in French as in 
German ; little will be lost, and there is even some ad- 
vantage to be gained, thanks to the peculiar qualities of our 
language. It is true that a translation is not a faithful 
reproduction of Shakespeare or Goethe ; but, after all, the 
reading of such translations widens the aesthetic horizon. 
On the other hand, their style is not exactly what should 
be set up as a model to youth. Fancy a child wanting to 
ape Shakespeare ! Risum teneatis, amid. 

It is said — We shaU give as compensation a sound French 
education to a large number. You will be no nearer doing 
this than if you gave a large number a sound trainmg in 
Greek and Latin. If your concern is the majority, you will 
have to lower the standard of Anglo-German-French instruc- 
tion, just as in the case of Gi'eek-Latin-French instruction. 
If, on the other hand, you do not trouble yourself about 
the majority — and there you will be right — you will soon 
find the ordinary strata reappearing ; you will get in French 
— as in Latin and Greek — the lazy, the mediocrities, the 
" dry husks." They Avill know no Latin, and they will know 
their mother tongue none the better for that, assuming that 
they will know it even as weU — an assumption opposed to 
the experience of ages. In vain will the standard of classical 
French instruction — of sjjecial iustruction, to call it by its 



MODERN LANGUAGES A\D UTEnATUEE 1C3 

true na.no-be raised ; a high standard will never be reached 
You wUI be incessantly kept back by the nature of boy. and 
masters ahke. Yon will have a multitnde, an int itumi 

them 'and T'"' ?,' "'" ""''^' ^°" '° ^'"-1 ^''o-'y 
them, and to watch over their immediate interests as 
bnppens m all too exclusively democratic and popular 
governments, in all cases where the suffrage is too direc 
and too universal. A whole nation will drag you down 
when yon wish to look at things from a loftier and broade; 
pomt of view. You will be like a captive balloon. What! 
ever yon do a system of French instruction must mean 
practical, ^ utilitarian instruction, scientific, technical pio^ 
xessional instruction The prospectus of the " Association for 
the Reform of Secondary Instrnction " gives a fresh proof of 
thiB, for there is no mention in it of anything but Mustrv 
and commerce. When you wish to cullivat: the b aS 
or Its own sake, masters and boys will cry in cho „ 
"What IS the use of it .^ It is neither modern enoZ' 
scientific enough, nor practical enough." The wolf of science 
will pounce upon the sheepfold of literature, and will soon 
have de^nred its inoffensive occupants. Soon it wiJlbe 
mathematicaUy demonstrated that not only Horace ,nd 
Virgil, but Bacine and Moliero are "old foo-ies '' Ynn. 
very masters will have to more or less conforni to the 
universal spirit of exclusively French, scientific, and moderr 
angnage " amateurism ; " you will rarely succeed in mak i '. 
them men of letters, philosopher, or disinterested ."m;"f 
Once yon write on the door of the lycenm, "Here we oidv 
each what is useful to modern society," yo^ will ra«iy fiS 
a teacher a parent, or a pupil untainted by the utihtarian 
spirit. And what pure metal can defy the touchs one of 
utilitarianism.? What use is Latin? No more use than 
be Venns of Milo. But what use is history, aidwhfS 
the use of my knowing that Louis XIV., the Ultramarine 
son Charles the Simple, reigned from 9S6 to 9M "d 
was all hisMife engaged in fruitless war ? What is the e 
of so much geograpliy ? Why need I, as ToIstoJ says, 1 nol 



164 EDUCATION FiLOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

all about the canal Mariine and its navigation ? " All I • 
have to do is to trust myself to the boatman." What is the 
use of geology, if I am never to be engaged in mining ? 
That idle lads at school, or that even a paterfamilias should 
make such fine excuses as these, is, after all, natural enough ; 
but should the State make them for them ? The State 
wishes to democratize instruction by its "French instruc- 
tion," and the result must inevitably be the lowering of the 
very standard it sets up. The new so-called " classical " 
system will never be anything but the " bastard of the 
lyceum and of the primary school." As for the elite of 
classical boys, they will soon be reduced to rari nantes in 
gurgite vasto (let me seize the opportunity of a Latin quota- 
tion while there is a Frenchman left who can understand 
it). The true interest of democracies is not to democratize 
everything, to reduce everything to a dead — to a plebeian — 
level. 

It is constantly urged that modern humanities must 
respond to a legitimate want, because so many pupils 
eventually take up a course of " special " instruction, and 
their numbers will probably increase with the advent of the 
new system. The retort is obvious — Offenbach and Pierre 
Lecocq must be administering to a legitimate want because 
crowds flock to " La Belle He'.ene " and to " La Fille de 
Madame Angot " (and I may add to bull-fights). By 
lowering the standard of art or of the curricula, you may be 
sure you are satisfying some wants; but it remains to be 
seen if they are the noblest. 

Besides, " special " instruction has only succeeded where 
its success was to be expected, i.e. in the three first years of 
the course ; after the third year, the boys leave. Its real 
role is to give moderate instruction to those who have in a 
few years to betake themselves to one of the industrial pro- 
fessions. This M. Duruy perfectly understood. 

AYe also find the " wishes of the parents " placed in the 
foreground. But a State like France, the depository of 
the honour of the country, cannot abandon to its parents 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE. 165 

the effective and practical direction of instruction. Parents ! 
Are they, as a rule, competent to judge ? In the matter of 
instructing and bringing up their children they are too 
often but " children of a larger growth." AYill the average 
fiither look at the question from the standpoint of the 
interests of nationality and of the race .? Will he trouble 
his head about the recruiting or the preservation of the 
intellectual elite, the selection to be effected, the national 
traditions to be maintained, and the progress to be ensured 
therewith, or, finally, the competition with our neighbours, i.e. 
what may be called the international interests of education ? 
It would be almost as foolish to consult parents on the role of 
Greek and Latin, or of philosophy in secondary education, on 
the comparative value of literature and science in education, 
as it would be to consult the children. Take journalists, 
men of letters and science, the members of the academies of 
science and medicine, or even the ministers themselves, how 
many are competent to express an opinion in matters con- 
nected with education ? A savant is reported to have said, 
in a full sitting of the Academic de Medecine, " Greek is 
no use to surgeons or physicians, therefore it should be sup- 
pressed." A senator also remarked, " We want men for our 
industries and for agriculture, therefore Latin must be 
suppressed." One minister wanted to restore classics, 
another at the Sorbonne eulogized modern languages. 
There is nothing to equal the chaos in pedagogy but the 
chaos in politics. Let the government propose to parents 
and children an expeditious system, comprising the mother 
tongue, modern languages, and science, with a matriculation 
and a guarantee of admission to the civil service, and 
parents will blindly place their children under this appa- 
rently imful system ; the children will be delighted ; they 
will not be kept so long at school; they Avill escape the 
Latin and Greek they are at present expected to learn up to 
the age of fifteen or sixteen ; French, English, and German 
will be the only languages in their curriculum, and, from a 
distance, will seem easy to them ; and they wall certainly bo 



16G EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

taught sciences which will be occasionally tedious enough., 
but which appear to be necessary for subsequent bread- 
winning. Well and good ; let us dispose of our academic 
honours at as cheap a rate as possible. Primo vivere, deinde 
non philosojjhari. 

But shall we have fostered the scientific spirit, as some 
anticipate ? Not in the least. The utilitarians are on the 
wrong track even from this point of view, in trying to 
substitute for Latin humanities a system in which science 
must eventually assume the greatest prominence. To 
obtain by selection the best engineers, mechanics, physicists, 
strategists, administrators, etc., the surest way, as we learn 
from, the experience of ages, is to, first of all, train the best 
scholars, minds steeped in literature and the artistic sense. 
If we pass in review the most illustrious of recent savants^ 
we shall find that they were all good scholars — Claude 
Bernard, Pasteur, and Berthelot, as well as Laplace, Biot, 
Ampere, and Cuvier. If the taste for literature, art, and 
philosophy did not persist in a certain number, we should 
see theoretical science — true science — checked in its pro- 
gress, and then in its turn applied science must decay. We 
must not therefore sacrifice to a particular and superficial 
utility the deepest and most fruitful forces of the human 
race ; it is the men of letters, poets, artists, and the silver- 
tongued — all, in fact, who cherish the sense of the beautiful 
— who make savants possible, and prepare the way for 
scientific discovery. If Greece had had no Homer, 
iEscLylus, Sophocles, Demosthenes, or Phidias, she would 
have had no Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, or Archimedes ; 
and she would have had no Alexander. If France had not 
in the seventeenth century placed the humanities higher 
than scientific training in the education of her children, 
she would not have had a Descartes or a Pascal, If 
our forefathers had thought of nothing but teaching 
their children the contents of the modern syllabus, and 
so-called useful truths, they w^ould have paralyzed scientific 
discovery, the genius of which is also the genius of liheral 



MODEEN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE. 167 

pursnitp, of the humanities, of the helles Icitres, and of the 
line arts.* 

As we are asked for facts and reasons, it has been ascer- 
tained by numerous observations in France, Germany, 
Belgium, and England, that those boys who have received a 
classical training are on the average superior to those who 
have only received a "modern" and scientific training. 
Dubois-Reymond states that boys at the gymnasiums who 
take up classics, even when of average ability, even when 
they have only done Latin and Greek grammar, are superior 
to the lads in the " special " schools to which boys from the 
Realschulen. who have not learned Latin are admitted. And 
in Germany the Realschulen — even those of the second class 
— do not as in France simply represent the waifs and strays 
from classical instruction ; many young and clever lads 
destined for the higher paths in some industrial occupation 
chaose the llealschulen ; now, according to Dubois-Eeymond, 
they are always inferior.f So according to statistics, which 

* Let us heai* what Paul Bert, a man of science, and the supporter of so 
many innovations, says on this point : " What I fear, and what 1 shall 
resist as far as I can, is that science is taking a fatal revenge on literature. 
I see this reactionary tendency growing in deliberative assemblies, and 
perhaps my own just demands and those of my friends have contributed to 
increase its power. But if great faults have been committed, that is no 
reason why greiiter blunders shall be perpetrated. In a word, do not let 
us despise the ideal because the useful has been too often neglected; the 
culture of the beautiful, respect for the not-useful, and the love of the 
ideal must inspire the youthful mind. Now, there is only one way of 
attaining this result — by a good literary culture" ("Lemons et discours," 
2nd edit., p. 324). 

f One of our most eminent critics, before his connection with the 
Bevuc des Deux 3Iondes, was on the staff of the Ecole Normale Superieure, 
ami taught French literature to the pupils at the College Chaptal and at 
the same time to the mathematical students at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand 
and the College Sainte-Barbe. At Chaptal almost every boy passed 
through his hands, as he took each class at some time or other during the 
week, and in this way he knew the boys in six classes, of course of varying 
ages. Now, says M. Brunetiere, "1 feel, after this experience gained 
under exceptional conditions, that for opening the mind and for general 
development, for a knowledge of our own tongue, and for literary skill, 



168 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

with geography and mechanics are the order of the day, the 
study of ancient languages and literatures is the best adapted 
to develop the fundamental faculties which give the impulse 
to the scientific faculties. This can be easily explained. 
The children who are learning Greek and Latin are raised 
above all the utilitarian interests developed by the study of 
modern languages ; their final examination is further off ; 
and their only motive in school-life is to work for the sake 
of working, or to do nothing at all. Now they all work 
more or less at certain hours. And in what does this work 
consist ? In translation from French into Latin or Greek, 
and vice versa; reflection on the sense and comparative 
value of terms, on the accuracy and elegance of expressions 
— in a word, the making a purely literary and disinterested 
use of the dead languages, a use opposed to that of the 
modern languages which are learned for the sake of speaking 
them. How could these intellectual gymnastics do other than 
produce superior results, attested as they are by statistics ? 

Of course, genius will manifest itself in special or in 
primary instruction, just as we meet with incapacity in 
classical instruction ; however, we must not consider the 
individuals, but the general spirit developed by a system 
and the tradition it represents, and, in particular, the rela- 
tion of that spirit to the preservation and progress of the 
national spirit. Even if in individual cases of competition 
the " modern " is better than the " classical " training, this 
would by no means prove that the new system could be 
generahzed without danger to the country. The literary 
spirit, hitherto fostered in France by classical education, is 



the boys who instead of a classical training have received a purely Frenc h 
education, with the addition of modern languages, are at least two and 
perhaps three yeai-s behind their fellows." At Louis-le-Grand and Sainte- 
Barbe, M. Brunetiere's pupils had done Latin and Greek grammar only, 
and had never had a thorough grounding in that, intending to devote 
themselves at an early period exclusively to mathematics. Here again the 
superiority of even a little classical training was equally marked. These 
observations agree with my own while I was engaged in teaching. 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE. 169 

communicated to all as by a kind of contagion, even in 
^'siDCcial" instruction, and this spirit will persist for a 
certain number of years ; but dry up the classical springs, 
dull the intellectual environment of the ruling classes, 
change the moral climate of the country, and France will 
soon be utilitarian and prosaic. In fact, when this comes 
about, France will have ceased to have a moral and political 
existence. 

It is constantly objected that women can receive an 
excellent education without Latin or Greek ; but how does 
the education that is successful in the case of girls help us 
when we are laying down the lines of an education for the 
majority of boys ? In the first place, girls are only half— 
and an original half — of the human race ; to assimilate 
them to boys, or vice versa, is to change the proportions in 
the terms of the problem ; it is not only altering the solu- 
tion, but actually changing the problem itseK. In the 
second place, women take no great part, in active life, in the 
struggle for existence ; they are not, like boys, under the 
pressure of immediate necessities for which the instruction 
in school prepares. It is the man who in time will establish 
and maintain the family. Similarly in the political organiza- 
tion of society, women have no directing action, they only 
exert an insensible action, which comes under the head of 
influences ; but it does not fall to their lot to strike a deadly 
blow or to lead the van. This more passive than active 
role is found again in the domain of intellect, and only the 
moral domain escapes from it. 

Woman learns everything — so to speak — by translation, 
even in science. She is, intellectually, a kind of mirror 
which reflects in a haphazard way images projected on it 
in an equally haphazard way. A liberal literary or scientific 
education is therefore rather a luxury than a necessity to her ; 
she sees in such an education not a compulsory task or 
imposition, but an honour that is paid her, and, as it were, 
a windfall. She takes up literature and science witJi the 
disinterested spirit of an amateur in the beautiful, and is 



170 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

not exposed to the utilitarian interests whicli influence boys. 
Teach chemistry to girls, and they will be proud of learning 
it, they will be interested in experiments which have no 
bearing on their future duties, and they will be interested in 
them precisely because they have no bearing on the future. 
The laws of combustion will in fact " amuse " them more 
than needlework and knitting. Hence the pleasure they 
take in learning it. Teach chemistry to boys ; at once they 
will ask if it is part of the work for their examinations, or 
if it is useful in their future career ; they have so many 
subjects to get up, that everything is referred to a utilitarian 
criterion. Chemistry will therefore lose almost all its educa- 
tive value to them, to the advantage of its instructive and 
professional value. Teach modern languages or French 
literature to young girls, and you will find, as before, the 
docihty of amateurs, an absence of industrial, commercial, 
and agricultural interests. Under such conditions, modern 
languages are of as much value to girls as Latin or Greek — 
perhaps of even more value. We are sure that they will 
study modern languages as literature, and not with a view 
to their utility in commercial life ; and as they are not 
(with few exceptions) overworked in the matter of literary 
production, the faults of the moderns wih not have a very 
unfortunate influence on their style. But if, on the other 
hand, intellectual and literary discipline is relaxed for boys, 
we are preparing for the decadeno!3 of our national art and 
literature. Utilitarian and professional interests only occur 
in the case of girls preparing for examination as teachers, 
etc., in short, in case of girls who have to earn their bread. 
There we get the counterpart of the storing up in the 
memory and of the scientific, historical, and geographical 
stupefaction which is called "preparation for the State 
schools." We surely do not wish to see such a state of 
things the rule among girls, or to prepare for ourselves as 
many " declassees " as women " bachelors." 

Woman is more docile, and more accessible to the ideas 
and impressions transmitted to her, precisely because she is 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE. 171 

not conscious of a literary and scientific instruction on as 
sure a basis, or with as active or as practical a scope as that 
given to the other sex ; she is especially guided by her 
artistic or moral instinct. The woman of to-day, by the 
relatively superior instruction she receives, is the pupil not 
only of poets and novehsts, but also of any serious author 
who does not sprinkle his pages with too many crabljed 
words (for scientific jargon is as repulsive to woman as 
Greek or Latin quotations). Similarly, it is not proved that 
the majority of readers of works of literary or moral value 
are not recruited from the weaker sex ; the men as a rule 
are too busy ; and then men's minds are made up, their 
ideas are retained with all the more force, because they have 
never had suspicion thrown upon them. Woman, who is 
not dogmatic, is naturally doubtful as far as anything 
but her fundamental belief is concerned ; she repeatedly 
examines and ponders over everything in the realm of ideas, 
and is not without subtlety. Hence it follows that by an 
appropriate education we may easily produce a kind of 
intellectual and moral atmosphere for woman, ambient air 
full of shades and graces, of delicacy and refinement— by 
which it is good for even man to find himself enveloped. 
But these qualities of the feminine mind are only valuable 
in the total result, and that from a general point of view. 
It is only an atmosphere, and the majority of lads want 
more precise education, a less malleable, less diffuse, and 
more virile state of mind. Whatever career he may eventu- 
ally select, the yomig man should have a clear, determined, 
accurate, and concise mind. The important thing to him 
is, therefore, not the passive reception of the sum-total of 
humanities contained in literature and science ; he must 
find things out for himself ; merely understanding is not 
enough ; he himself must produce and be " a somebody." 
It is no use simply showing him machinery, he must take it 
to pieces and put it together again, so that in his turn he 
may invent. Do not merely want him, like a woman, to 
have a kindly feeling for literature, science, and art j but 



172 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

make him develop his intellecfc by the recognized classical 
exercises, so as eventually to be able to bring that intellect 
into play, and that in proportion to his worth, bis 
tendencies, and the literary or scientific work allotted to 
him. Man should communicate to woman whafc is best in 
the intellectual world and in sesthetics ; but before he can 
communicate it, he must first of all discover and acquire it. 
The education of girls is like their hoUday tours, in which 
they see the sea, climb mountains, and venture to the edge 
of a precipice or on a glacier, but always on the express 
condition of being accompanied and guided step by step; 
whereas in the case of their brothers at the lyceums, even 
their mothers send them alone to discover the Mediter- 
ranean. 

The positions of boys and girls in the matter of education 
are in a measure opposed under ordinary circumstances. In 
the one case mental initiative must be developed to aid 
production ; in the other — save in the great exceptions which 
occm' among women as well as among men — mental re- 
ceptivity must be cultivated. The ideal of woman's educa- 
tion from the purely intellectual, literary, and scientific — I 
do not say moral — point of view, is to have, so to speak, a 
large number of planets well illumined by a borrowed light ; 
the ideal of man's education, to make as many suns as 
possible, small or great — and this we are far from doing. 
In the moral order, women are, equally with men if not 
more than they are, foci of vivifying warmth and fertility ; 
here their role is so important that they may well rest 
content with it. 

The development of the sense of the beautiful and of the 
good in woman is of first importance ; her education should 
therefore be mainly moral and esthetic ; " she will transmit 
to her children by education or by heredity the same 
aesthetic or moral delicacy. As for the positive sciences, 
they should be taught to women so far as to develop the 
scientific sense which will protect them from superstition 
and prejudice. Women should have " clear views on every- 



MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATUllE. 173 

thing;" technical knowledge or knowledge involving too 
much detail they do not need. Details which overload the 
memory at the expense of the physical and intellectual 
health are far more harmful to woman than to man ; 
cliildren are certain in the long run to suffer from the 
fatigue imposed upon the mother. 

Finally, it is said that girls, in their secondary education, 
receive a purely modern training, without Greek or Latin ; 
this is a pure illusion, and the truth is, they receive classical 
instruction second hand. They are saturated with Latin 
and Greek, although they know no word of either.* When 
a girl takes a pen in hand and tries to compose, she is 
subjected to the influence of classical traditions — although 
weak and indirect, as may be seen from her style. I must 
repeat that such an education is quite sufficient for a woman, 
but insufficient for a man. Applied to the stronger sex, it 
must eventually bring on intellectual and esthetic sterility, 
because everything will become too contemporary, too 
utilitarian if scientific, too impressionist if aesthetic, and too 
little regulated by the discipline of the past. The lyceum 
will be like a conservatoire de musique et declamation, where 
they only study the most recent, agreeable, and immediately 
useful works, the work most likely to be successful not 
merely with the public of the Theatre-Frangaise or of the 
Opera, but with the public of the minor Parisian and 
provincial theatres. 



* They do, however, learn the elements of Latin in their last two years 
at tichool. 



171 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDrOINT. 



CHAPTER III. 

FRENCH '' SPECIAL "INSTRUCTION, AND THE GERMAN 
REALSCHULE. 

As early as 1886 an attempt was made to induce the High 
Council of Public Instruction to agree to the transformation 
of " special " into classical French instruction. The draft 
scheme began with the following words : "The new instruc- 
tion will be general and classical ; it must be organized so 
as to respond to the new requirements of modern society, and 
so as to attract to secondary " French " studies those who 
have neither the taste nor the leisure for a study of the 
dead languages." The High Council had no difficulty in 
seeing that the promoters wished to divert "special" 
instruction from the end assigned to it by its origin and by 
its name. Care was taken to state that the idea of an 
assimilation of " French " and " classical " instruction was 
untenable ; " there is only one true classical instruction, viz. 
that based upon the study of the dead languages." All other 
instruction directed to the same ends by other means can 
only be a sham " classical " instruction, which we certainly 
do not want. " Special " instruction must remain as at 
present — practical and utilitarian in tendency. It should 
be directed solely with a view to forming the class of mind 
required by industry, commerce, and agriculture. But the 
council was so unpardonably weak and imprudent as to 
allow the final examination to rank as a baccalaureat ; and 
the minister, on consultation with his coUeagues, agreed to 
consider this baccalaureat as equivalent to, or even in some 
cases superior to, the rest in the entrance to a liberal career, 
or to posts in the civil service. This made the protest of 



FEENCH ••SPECIAL" INSTPvUCTION. 175 

the council merely Platonic. In this "special" baccalaureat, 
literature, ethics, and philosophy count for next to nothing 
as compared with mathematics, book-keeping, and science. 
Hence all that the High Council feared has become a reality 
in spite of it, and against its express wishes. This 
" special " instruction, especially if converted into " French 
classical," will lead in less time and with less sacrifice to the 
same positive results as the study of Greek and Latin, and 
therefore will naturally be forced upon parents and children. 
As M. Eabier predicted in his report, classics will be con- 
sidered of the past and out of date. Neither hesitation nor 
remorse will be felt in avoiding the disinterested intellectual 
effort involved in the study of the dead languages. The 
idleness of the young is tempted by the prospect of less 
effort and the same result, while the weakness of home 
influence, so prevalent in our days, becomes an accomplice. 
"Thus," concludes M. Rabier, in the name of the High 
Council, "this reform tends, whether avowedly or not, 
whether they like it or not, to the gradual extinction of the 
classical system." And it is this so-called " reform " that 
seems to be on the verge of final triumph. Law, the last 
safeguard, supposing it retains the classics, will be insuffi- 
cient and inetficacious. for it will only attract to a really 
classical education a small minority of boys. IMoreover, 
the reformers with halting logic will cry — Why learn 
Latin and Greek, if we are to plead in the courts in 
French ? This, then, is the final result of recent reforms ; 
it is proclaimed on the housetops that " aspirants to the 
scientific professions will learn Latin and Greek until they are 
fifteen or sixteen." What a triumph for those who remain 
faithful to Greek ! But wait ; in cauda vencnum, as our 
fathers used to say. They will take up Latin and Greek if 
they refuse to adopt the " French classic?! system," which 
by the shortest and easiest road will lead to the same profes- 
sions. The door of escape is wide open — and there will be 
a stampede. Teachers of Latin, Greek, and philosophy will 
be left alone with their elile of delicate youths. France will 



176 EDUCATIOM FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

be defined by other nations as — a country said to be neo- 
Latin, with a decreasing population, once enjoying literary 
supremacy, but now her savants ^ teachers of science, doctors, 
high officials, and even her administrators and magistrates, 
cannot hear two words of Latin without blushing. 

The reformers profess to be taking as their example the 
German BealscJmIe, but in reality they have a very false 
idea of that institution. Originally, under Francke, Semler, 
and Hecker, these schools were professional schools ; 
gradually as much general knowledge and Latin were intro- 
duced as to make them eventually rivals of the gymnasiums. 
They then ceased to be professional, and became, as it were, 
modified gymnasiums, giving more time to science, less to 
literature, and therefore considered as specially preparing — 
although in a perfectly general manner — for an industrial, 
commercial, or agricultural hfe. But the Germans have 
been careful to maintain the hierarchy — although, in my 
opinion, it is an insufficient hierarchy. Besides, if the 
Realschule of the second class corresponds to the French 
" special " instruction, their schools of the first class or 
*' real-gymnasinms " correspond to our old "science section," 
but with the difference that in Germany the science schools 
are quite distinct from the literary schools. In the real- 
gymnasiums — especially in Prussia — the students do far 
more Latin and literature than our science students. Before 
many years are over, Latin — to which all German schools 
are returning — will be required everywhere. 

In Germany, secondary education applies to a portion of 
the community which has neither the same rights nor the 
same social duties as the corresponding section of French 
society.* The German middle classes are not, as in France, 
the only ruling class in a democracy which has universal 
suffrage. The feudal system has left numerous vestiges in 
Germany; the aristocracy is still of considerable political 

* Vide, on this point, M. Ferueuil's volume, " La Reforme de I'lnstruction 
en France," the conclusions in which I call in question. 



FRENCH "SPECIAL" INSTRUCTION. 177 

imporfcance; higher education in Germany has a peculiar 
vitality and a directive mission; in a word, the German 
middle classes are called neither by the letter nor by the 
spirit of their institutions to exercise a preponderating 
influence on the administration of the government. Germany 
might therefore, without any great inconvenience, narrow 
the field of liberal education, and restrict it to that elite 
which is likely to go to the universities. In spite of this, 
when creating the RealschuU with a view to the interests of 
industry, commerce, and agriculture, Germany has deter- 
mined to make as general as possible the classical training 
which she has maintained in its integrity in the gymnasiums. 
With us, the middle classes form the political aristocracy of 
our democracy; they alone, by a purely moral and social 
influence, can counterbalance the mass of the people, who 
are invested with the same political rights, but are not so 
well educated. If the masses became the ruling classes, we 
should have, in a measm-e, a government of primary instruc- 
tion, in wliich general, far-sighted, and disinterested views 
would be necessarily sacrificed to the material needs, or to the 
passions of the moment. It follows that all the comparisons 
that are constantly made between our " special " instruction 
and the Realsclmh in Germany prove nothing. When 
France is handed over to a ruling class, brought up under a 
system of " special " or " French classical " instruction, she 
will be a degraded nation, left to the tender mercies of 
mediocrities and barbarians.* 



* But even in Germany, enlightened minds protest, with the Rector of 
the University of Berlin, against the increasing realism of the Ecalschule, 
and against the American tendencies too prevalent in the gvmnasiums and 
in the universities. "I confess," says Dubois-Eeymond, *' that I share the 
opinion of those who want a single type of school, from which the bovs 
will proceed, prepared either for the university, the army, or the technical 
schools. Properly conceived, these schools would be classical gymnasiums, 
reformed in a rational manner. Independently of all administrative 
regulations, the rivalry with the Ecalschule would be terminated if the 
gymnasium sacrificed to present exigencies some of its very honourable 
but superannuated pretensions, and conformed more to the tendencies of 
14 



178 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

In 1870 a great blunder was made in Germany, analogous 
to that which has been perpetrated in France. The Prussian 
Minister of Public Instruction, after having taken the 
advice of a body of savants, took no notice of their recom- 
mendations. They unanimously recommended that boys 
should be versed in literature, with intellects developed, 
fortified with a good Latin and Greek education, and that 
they should not have too much mathematics. But at 
that time the Realschule was in a critical state, for boys 
were leaving it for want of an outlet for higher instruc- 
tion. All who were interested were in despair. Besides, 
teachers for modern languages and natural history could not 
be obtained. The ministry, sacrificing permanent to tem- 
porary interests — as politicians too often do — decided in 
1870 that students with diplomas from the real-gymnasiums 
(the counterpart of our Bacheliers es Sc, but knowing more 
Latin) should be allowed to enter the universities as students 
" in mathematics, natural science, or modern philology ; " the 
latter being interpreted is equivalent to " modern languages." 
It was also added that, in the allocation of professional 
distinctions, pupils from the gymnasiums should, cceteris 
'paribus, have the preference. As for medicine, theology, and 
higher literary work, they are as absolutely closed to pupils 
from the real-gymnasiums as to the Bacheliers es Sc. This 
ministerial decree was not allowed to pass unchallenged, and 
is still severely criticised. To far-sighted observers the 
success of Americanism and realism has caused much anxiety, 
although in reality the question is the simple one of teaching 
modern languages, natural history, and mathematics, without 
Greek and with Latin. Further, very few pupils from the 



modern times." After an enumeration of the changes he proposes in 
instruction in the gymnasium, he concludes : " It seems to me that a reform 
such as I have ventured to point out wouhl be the best resistance we could 
offer to the invasion of our modern civilization by realism. The gymnasium, 
rejuvenated and brought into harmony with modern requirements, would 
for the first time be a formidable opponent to realism." 



FRENCH "SrECIAL" INSTRUCTION. 179 

real-gymnasium apply for the maturitdtspriifung — the 
equivalent to our baccalaureat. 

Germany is also making an effort to return to the unity 
of secondary instruction. In the scheme of 1882 the 
instruction in the first three classes of the Realschule corre- 
sponds to that of the first classes in the classical gymnasium, 
so as to allow those to pass from the Realschule to the 
gymnasium who have the capacity or the wish for a longer 
and sounder training. In this way there will be hut two 
branches in secondary instruction, only differing in (1) 
the presence or absence of Greek, (2) the greater or less 
prominence awarded to science. 

In Germany — and in England — the tendency of the 
Realschule to realism is corrected by the custom of proceeding 
to the universities. This is an aristocratic tradition, a 
tradition among all self-respecting classes, just as in France 
the taking of the baccalaureat is a tradition among the 
middle classes. But in France the idea is that instruction 
is now complete, whereas in England and Germany this is 
simply the entrance to a higher education. If we retain in 
France a utilitarian and "realistic" baccalaureat, if we 
suppress this platform on which the educated classes of every 
country meet in common — Latin — we need no longer 
endeavour to maintain a system that will be classical, 
disinterested, and fundamentally Hterary ; science and its 
applications will eventually absorb everything — even French 
literature ; for as far as the universities are concerned, the 
French are somewhat restive under any prolongation of their 
studies. You will find it difficult to make parents believe 
that it is necessary to send young men to foUoAv a course of 
lectures on the Investiture Dispute, or on Ronsard and the 
sixteenth century, or on the origin of German literature, 
etc. To launch their sons into student-life to acquire a 
knowledge of all these special subjects is what parents will 
not consent to ; they have too little confidence in the French 
child's wisdom to leave him to his own devices "in the 
streets of a great town," unless they are absolutely forced 



ISO EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

to do so, as is the case in the study of law or medicine. 
Then it is said that to read Ronsard himself, or literary 
history, or criticisms on literature, is quite as valuable a 
training as Kstening to a few discourses of a professor to 
his audience. What can he learned from a course of that 
kind that cannot be learned from books ? Besides, they 
add, the professor will in all probability publish his course 
of lectures, if he has discovered anything interesting ; and 
we can read them at home. In Germany four-fifths of the 
pupils at the gymxuasium proceed to the universities, and 
the numbers are the larger because the Protestant pastors 
go there to learn theology ; it may therefore be said that 
secondary and higher instruction are continuous. In France, 
a middle class, democratic, and also Catholic country, it 
is simply chimerical to expect an analogous result. Our 
secondary education must be, if necessary, sufficient in itself 
for all purposes. Those who at present are striving to 
subordinate it to higher instruction, and to impoverish it 
and restrict it under the pretence of afterwards sending our 
youth to universities imitated from the Germans (where, 
however, they will receive higher instruction without knowing 
a word of Latin), appear to me to be neglecting to take into 
account the difference between the two countries. We must 
certainly enrich and strengthen higher instruction, and this is 
being done ; we must also organize professional instruction, 
and this is not being done ; but what is of more importance 
than anything else is to strengthen the only instruction which 
has as its proper object not knowledge and its practical 
applications, but the intellectual, sesthetic, moral, and civic 
culture of the young who will eventually be the brain of the 
countrj. 



CHAPTEE lY. 

PROPOSED REFORMS. 

I. To snm up,— at a time when Germany, England, and even 
Italy are anxious on account of the increase of the Real- 
schuUn and of the "realism" encouraged therein, when 
these countries are proposing to return to the "single 
secondary school," we are urged in France to substitute a 
kind of Anglo-Germano-scientific harlequinade for classical 
culture, to suppress Latin, which is both universally tradi- 
tional and a part of French tradition, and which has con- 
tributed to the development of French influence. I myself 
feel that the time has not yet come for breaking our 
connection with a literature with which French literature 
is so intimately related. " Gentlemen of the English or 
German guard, fire first ! " 

But the English and Germans are careful to keep to a 
classical trainmg. We have just seen that the Germans in 
particular jealously preserve, side by side with the Real- 
schulen, the gymnasiums in which Latin is learned for nine 
years and Greek for seven. In the RealschuUn themselves, 
at least in those of the first class or real-gymnasiums, the 
study of Latin is revived so far as to have allotted to it in 
certain institutions thirty-four hours a week (and this for 
nine years) 1 Must the resources of the State be employed— 
limited as they are— in the futile manufacture of another 
system of secondary education, for the simple pleasure of 
replacing Latin (the sine qua non of all real hterary educa- 
tion) by a modern language, and thus in the creation of a 



182 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

fatal competition with the only studies considered in all 
other conntries deserving of the name of "classical " ? * Is 
that the best way of spending our resources ? It would be 
infinitely better if we consecrated our resources to the 
establishment of " the great public service we have not got," 
a system of really professional instruction. 

Technical instruction in France is in a rudimentary and 
chaotic state. Professional schools have been created here 
and there, haphazard, "on no general plan, and without any 
logical system," as M. Maneuvrier says. Some belong to the 
St^te, others to the departments, others to the communes ; 
some' are under the control of the Minister of Public In- 
struction ; some depend on the Public Works Department ; 
others on the Minister of Commerce, or the Minister of 
Ao-riculture. An inventory of our technical instruction is 
very soon made, and M. Maneuvrier sums it up in a few 
lines.t "We have eight commercial schools ; Germany has 
two hundred. We have a dozen schools for those entering 
industrial life ; Germany has more than a hundred. In the 
face of this state of things, to squander the finances with 
fatal effect on classical instruction— which is all we have 

* Even in America Latin and Greek are in the forefront ; girls often 
learn Latin. The elements of Latin have been introduced in the primary 
schools. "The role assigned to Latin in the American school," says 
M. Buisson, "is one of the peculiarities that first strike the visitor, 
e.-pecially if he be a Frenchman. Everything surprises him, both the fact 
the Latin is in every curriculum, even where it is apparently out of place, 
and the way in which it is taught." 

f Schools of Arts and Trades, Chalons, Aix, Angers; Schools of Mines, 
Dcuai, Alais; Ecole de la Martiniere at Lyons; school of weaving and 
spinning at Amiens; schools for watch aud clock-making at Cluses and 
Besan^o^n; for china and pottery at Limoges ; apprentice schools at Nantes 
and Havre ; in Paris, the institutions of S. Nicolas, the workshop-school of 
La Villette in La Rue de Tournette, and for cabinet-making in the Rue de 
Reuilly ; a few farming-schools in the departments, and a few communal 
commercial schools. 

For the latest returns on this point, vide "L'Enseignement Superieur et 
L'Enseignement Technique en France," by Paul Melon, 1891: Armand 
Colin ; " Les Ecoles fran9aises Civiles," by A. Andreani, 1891 : Berger* 
Levrault (2V.). 



PROPOSED PvEFORMS. 183 

left — witliout even rqilacing it ly proper professional instruc- 
tion, would be worse than madness from the national and 
international points of view. If professional and technical 
training were soundly organized, a number of our sixty 
thousand boys, after a few years of "special" instruction, 
would take up their technical work; this may be inferred 
from the considerable number of these boys — about one-third 
— who actually do so at present. Those youths would only 
remain who intended to devote themselves to the end of 
their school-life to the " humanities." 

This, then, is the solution. We must organize not two 
equal types, but three unequal degrees of secondary instruc- 
tion — classical, special, and professional. There would be 
no difference in secondary education between these, except 
in some branches- of knov/ledge and of instruction, properly 
so called, notably individual sciences which may be easily 
substituted one for the other, history and geography, and 
finally Greek. If, for instance, mechanics will be useful 
later on, drop botany and mineralogy and learn mechanics ; 
if common law, or commercial geography, or even book- 
keeping be preferred, choose whatever you like, and there 
is no inconvenience attached to a choice ; in " mental 
chemistry," ten atoms of common law may replace ten atoms 
of commercial geography ; this is the only speciahzation 
which is without danger to the school. But there should be 
no difference with regard to what is the very soul of a 
classical education : (1) the national language, French ; 
(2) the second national language, historically and as litera- 
ture, viz. Latin — which is also the international language in 
the culture of the educated classes ; (3) the general theory 
of mathematical and physical science, which is the same for 
all ; (4-) the study of philosophy and ethics, which is original 
and unrivalled, ai]d the necessary crown of a liberal educa- 
tion, especially in a country where the religious spirit is 
weakened, and in which morals have become purely lay. 
We therefore lay down in secondary instruction a constant 
educative and a variable instructive side, fundamental 



184 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

obligatory classes and optional courses. Our motto is — not 
the most ignoble motto in the world, Omnibus omnia — but 
Omyiilics opima. 

As for "French" instruction with science and modern 
languages, it is not in itself to be despised, but we have seen 
that it is not the real type of secondary classical, liberal, and 
national instruction. However profitable such an education 
may be, it will be inferior, and should be openly confessed to 
be inferior, in the interests of a classical training, as long as 
our conditions of national greatness and influence, as well as 
those of other nations, are not so profoundly modifxcd as to 
allow us an independent bias in the matter of classics, 
or even to allow it to all nations. Either you want 
" humanities," and can pursue the study of the classics, or 
you neither will nor can ; tliis includes all possibilities, but 
there are not ten ways of studying humanities in a given 
nation with a given past, with a given future to be ensured, 
with intellectual unity to be secured, and with a position to 
maintain with respect to other nations. Are these words of 
mine inspired by a superstitious reverence for Latin for its 
own sake ? No, but they are inspired by a superstitious 
reverence for the glory of France. Blunders are worst in 
education, because whole generations are compromised. We 
do not want to add an intellectual to a military Sedan. 

The true object of special instruction should be to give to 
mediocrities of every kind the means of becoming, not 
artists or men of letters, but masculine Marthas, who can 
intelligently take their part in the great national household, 
having had the elements of literary culture, and having had 
their minds developed. We want Marthas as well as 
Marys ; but this is no reason for rewarding both equally. 
One man — as a man — may be worth as much as another ; 
but a blacksmith is not as good as a shoemaker — as a shoe- 
maker ; and a shoemaker is not as good as a blacksmith — as a 
blacksmith ; ne sutor ultra crepidam. Here the High Council 
committed its first and serious blunder, the effect of which 
has been disastrous. But the remedy is simple. Strengthen 



PKOPOSED REFORMS. 185 

"special" instruction in its own domain, and raise it a 
stage higher. It will then be what its original founder 
intended it to be — a half -primary, half -secondary system of 
instruction, preparatory for industrial life, intended for those 
who have neither taste nor means, and, most of all, for 
those who have not the time to receive a complete and 
general training. It must be admitted that the State is 
inverting the hierarchy so needful to a democracy, when it 
gives the same "laurel crown" to those who had the 
merit, or at least the good intention of pursuing their 
classical studies as to those who, absorbed by their imme- 
diate interests, hasten over their school-life, voluntarily or 
compelled thereto by necessity, so as to take up their career 
in life as quickly as possible. We hear it constantly said 
that our democracy is in a hurry ; yes, and far too much so. 
This is a fault common to all democracies, but in particular 
to the French and to the youth of France. It were far 
better to check this precipitation and thoughtlessness 
than to give way to it and to offer to it an expeditious 
course of instruction, an express train, as it were, to reach 
lucrative positions. In any case, those who are pressed on 
have only to dispense with classics ; but do not let them 
imagine that they are recompensed by a title which can 
only satisfy their amour propre, and deceive others as to 
their true worth. Why, except for the purpose of flattering 
their own vanity and that of their relations, should they 
want the title of bachelor when they have not been through 
the proper course, and when they do not need the title in 
their industrial or commercial career ? Why not pass a law 
declaring that every Frenchman is born a bachelor and a 
chevalier of the Legion of Honour ? 

II. The principal features of the reform I propose are as 
follows : — 

1. Secondary education is fundamentally but one system : 
(1) The literature of the mother country ; (2) Latin litera- 
ture, from which modern literature has sprung, and which in 



186 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

these days is necessary for the unity of national and inter- 
national spirit in the educated classes ; (3) general history ; 
(4) the elements of mathematics and physics. Where 
diversity arises, it should only be in the following special 
subjects : G-reek, secondary science subjects, with applied 
science, and modern languages. 

2. The final examination on leaving school or entering 
a university, such as the French baccalaureat, is but one 
examination, based upon the humanities, with four alter- 
natives : (1) literature and philosophy ; (2) literature 
and mathematics ; (3) literature and natural science ; (4) 
literature with industrial and economic science. 

3. Classes in French, Latin, general history, and philo- 
sophy, will be common to all boys without exception, while 
at school. Greek may be replaced by equivalent subjects in 
the two last years of school-life. 

4. From fourteen to fifteen years of age, a boy may 
attend optional classes in mathematics if he is destined for 
a scientific career. 

5. For those who wish to take the examination in litera- 
ture and mathematics, or in literature and natural science, 
the four hours of Greek may be replaced by f ou- hours at 
extra science after the age of fifteen or sixteen. 

6. At sixteen or seventeen candidates destined for a 
scientific career may substitute science for three out of the 
four lessons in philosophy. The classes in philosophy, 
which all are not obliged to attend, will be restricted to 
candidates for the examination in literature and philosophy, 
the subjects being the history of philosophy, explanation of 
philosophical writers, and questions in philosophy 

7. Candidates for the examination m literature and 
economic and industrial science may replace Greek at 
fifteen or sixteen by applied science, industrial, agricultural, 
and commercial economy, and modern languages. At six- 
teen or seventeen they may replace three of the four classes 
in philosophy by the study of industrial and commercial 
geography and law, and by extra classes in modern languages. 



PROrOSED REFORMS. 187 

In both cases optional classes in book-keeping may be 

attended. . ^ -, • x- 

8 The first and obligatory part of the final examination 
will consist of : (1) Latin translation, in order to ensure 
a sonnd knowledge of Latin ; (2) a French essay. ^ In the 
case of candidates in philosophy and literature, it would 
be as well to add a piece of easy Greek for translation, 
and for other candidates a paper on modern languages. 
A viva voce in Greek and modern languages will be obli- 
gatory on all candidates. The second obligatory part will 

consist of — 

A French essay on some philosophical subject. 

For candidates in literature and mathematics, a paper in 
mathematics. 

For candidates in literature and natural science, a paper 

in natural science. ^ i • j x • i 

For candidates in literature, economics, and industrial 
science, a paper in economics and industrial science. 

9. Candidates in philosophy may acquire certificates for 
other subjects than those in which they are specializing, by 
presenting themselves for-(l) a paper in modern languages ; 
(2) a paper on the particular science subjects they wish to 
take up ; (3) viva voce in modern languages and science. 
SimUarly, candidates in science may present themselves for 
examination in philosophy by taking papers (1) m Greek, 
(2) in philosophy. 

If any lads should find their ideas as to their vocation 
modified by the end of school-life, they can very easily change 
their pursuit and choose at their own pleasure after a few 
complementary courses ; and eventually they will gain a 
double diploma. 

10. Special instruction will take a more practical torm 
and abandon its pretensions to be classical ; it will be 
limited to four years. . 

The diploma will be given at the end of this time 
after an examination with a view to the ordinary paths of 
industry, commerce, and agriculture. Examination in 



188 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

economic and industrial science will provide for the higher 
paths of these professions the literary, well-educated, and 
liberal elite they need. 

11. Professional and technical instruction will be so 
organized as to furnish a natural complement either to the 
classical side of the econojnic and industrial subdivision or 
to " special " instruction. 

It will be noticed that in this system nothing is sacri- 
ficed and all subjects are included. Greek, of which a 
sound knowledge is required from some, will be retained for 
the rest in a moderately easy form. " Classical French " 
instruction is unnecessary by this organization of a classical 
instruction with economic and industrial science. Finally, 
legitimate prominence is given to modern languages for 
those who need them. We have then a single type of 
secondary education, Greek and applied science being the 
only variants. 

If the fanatical adorers of industry, commerce, and 
agriculture (the fashionable divinities of the day) do not 
find the amount of economic and industrial science enough 
to suit them, we might replace Greek, at fifteen or 
sixteen (or even at fourteen) by science and modern 
languages, on the deliberate statement by parents that 
their child is definitely intended for industry, commerce, or 
agriculture. The Franco-Latin instruction thus organized 
would be certainly worth far more than the " French 
instruction" with which we are threatened. No boy 
would be prevented from recurring in later years to the 
liberal professions, to the law, medicine, etc., because he 
would only have to complete his work in Greek. This 
would be their only punishment for not having known 
their own minds at first. Five hours more for science 
and modern languages at fourteen or fifteen, and four 
hours more at fifteen or sixteen, ought to content the 
utilitarian Minotaur, and would compromise neither the 
Uberal character nor the fundamental unity of the classical 



PROPOSED EEFOEMS. 189 

training, nor its harmony with the Latin training universal 
in other nations. But I think that a simple division of 
science subjects at fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen would be 
quite enough. 

We must conclude that the State should maintain and 
even increase the severity of its requirements in examina- 
tions, in proportion as the number of candidates and 
petitioners for appointments increases ; a lawyer or a doctor 
is not only a lawyer or a doctor, he is a part of the ruling 
class necessary to a democracy, and has a mission, a civic 
duty to fulfil. It is the right and the duty of the State to 
say to them, "You will be men of letters, you will not 
simply be workmen — surgeons, or merchant-doctors, or mere 
artisan lawyers, mere business men, with the motto, Dulces 
ante omnia . . . Nummi. And so with all the hberal pro- 
fessions. Instead of opening the gates of the public service 
to those who have taken a short cut, the State should say, 
" You cannot enter unless you have received the education 
which makes the real elite of the country. It is not enough 
for a public servant to know how to read, write, or keep 
accounts ; /o;2^^^(??z oUige ; you cannot be a part of the 
administration unless you are animated by the traditional 
spirit which has made France what she is." In the educa- 
tion it gives, the State must only have in view the nation 
and the race she represents. To require the State to 
give an instruction which is almost exclusively directed to 
individual necessities, which has in view from the outset 
only our immediate interests, is to ask it to betray its 
mission, to ask it to commit also a crime of Ihe-nationaliie, 
and, if I may say so, Ihe-race. This, however, is what most 
of our modern reformers seem to me to propose ; they pique 
themselves on being practical, and yet, as Montesquieu says, 
they want to hew down the- tree to get the sooner at the 
fruit. The old university was blamed for forming a 
literary nation ; if the new formed a nation of foremen, as 
has been said, should we be any the more free or strong ? * 

* Paul Bert, *' Lecons, discours, et confereuces," loo. cii. 



190 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

No real education in liberty and civic virility has yet been 
organized for onr middle classes ; but is that the fault of 
Latin and Greek ? Will it be enough, as is supposed, to 
suppress them, to reduce classics to studies at second-hand, 
in order to give mental ballast, grasp, and energy ? That is 
far too good to be true. On philosophy and social science 
falls the task of forming a middle class fitted to the lofty 
duties of its political and social function ; but a larger share 
can be given to these studies without suppressing classics, 
which form the natural preparation for them. Positive 
science and modern languages have no particular value in 
forming free citizens ; on the other hand, we do not find 
that classics prevent the Germans or English from practising 
certain political virtues in which we are lacking. The old 
system of education was called liberal because it was dis- 
interested. In the repubhcs of antiquity, the free man was 
the man who was not concerned with the material and 
mechanical applications of science and art, but sought after 
the beautiful and the true for their OAvn sake, after mental 
culture for the mind's sake. Liberty, liberality, and dis- 
interestedness were synonymous. Further, liberty was con- 
ceived of as inseparable from the " pubhc weal," the city, 
the fatherland, i.e. the human group of which the individual 
was a member ; patriotism was the practical form of scien- 
tific, sesthetic, and philosophical disinterestedness. The free 
man was therefore the citizen, he whose main interest was the 
good of that repubhc of which the direction was intrusted to 
him. In spite of the increasing influence of the useful in 
modern life, I do not think that, especially in France, it is 
possible to conceive of a liberal education — primary or 
secondary — other than of the moral or civic type. But 
secondary instruction should have an esthetic and literary 
as well as a philosophical and scientific character, of which 
primary instruction can only have the reflection. From the 
moral and civic point of view primary instruction should be 
as soundly organized as secondary ; in this connection, in 
fact, it is of equal value and importance, because it is the 



PROFOSED EEFORMS. 191 

nation that votes, chooses its representatives, and is 
sovereign. But it is clear that we cannot assimilate primary 
and secondary instruction from the literary, artistic, and 
scientific points of view ; in the primary school it is enough 
to develop the mind so as to be capable of receiving the 
best literary, scientific, philosophical, or artistic impres- 
sions ; in secondary schools we must prepare not merely 
"receivers," but producers, initiators, even creators, if 
possible, who will come to the front by selection. If you 
lower the literary, artistic, scientific, and philosophical 
standard of instruction under the pretence of bringing it 
nearer the democratic mass, you will sterilize the productive 
and creative part of the nation. Under the pretext of 
giving a " more practical and more active," a more modern 
and more " democratic " education, you will suppress the 
very source of high intellectual activity, and you will be 
preparing for the downfall of democracy itself. 

Do not therefore allow primary instruction, necessary as 
it is in its true place, elevated and noble as it should become, . 
to usurp a place which is not its own, to swallow up all 
other instruction, and to invade higher regions under 
different names. In these days democracy, it is true, can- 
not readily conceive the nature of the higher culture of 
others, that refreshes them like fruitful waters from the 
mountain heights. It is the duty of the republic, if it 
realizes its mission, to strive against this tendency, to m.ain- 
tain those higher influences, not by privilege and monopoly, 
not by a hateful, aristocratic disdain of the toiling masses, 
but by a perfectly natural selection and by a really liberal 
education. On secondary instruction in France the futm-e 
of the country depends, because it is the directing influence 
of primary instruction as well as a preparation for higher 
instruction. Such should be our secondary and democratic 
education, at least as long as the nation is to be perfectly 
free, as long as the whole future of France is not to be con- 
centrated in a popular instruction conceived in an entirely 
utilitarian and practical spirit. A classical diploma is a 



192 EDtrCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

social as well as a professional guarantee ; those who will 
some day have a directive mission in the State should 
therefore be educated in conformity to those literary and 
philosophical traditions which are the glory of France. 



BOOK V. 

PHILOSOPHY, ETHICS, AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 
EEOM THE NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



In the past the unity of education was to the religious mind 
a necessity; the master was in most cases a priest; his 
authority was therefore twofold — pedagogic and moral. In 
these days the teacher is a well-educated man, a savmit ; a 
man of letters, who teaches what he knows irrespective of 
his colleagues, and endeavours to teach as much of his own 
subject as possible. Latin grammar or Greek in the 
morning ; geography or history in the evening ; to-morrow 
geometry; and each master is in his place, inviting the 
boys to follow him, sometimes without avail. " One of our 
boys," writes the Eector of Toulouse, in his official report, 
" may have in the course of the day as many as five or more 
masters." We may fairly assume, writes M. Marion, in his 
report, that at least half of these masters are but poor 
teachers : " It would be a miracle if they were not, when all 
that they are expected to know is the subject they teach." 
What will be left in a child's mind at the end of a day, a 
month, or a year ? Confused and disconnected ideas, without 
any clear conclusion, and the sense of cerebral fatigue, of a 
journey through chaos. Hence the question the boys ask 
under breath and sometimes aloud — Why, what is the good 
of it ? The only categorical answer at present is the final 
15 



194 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

sanction of tlie baccalaureat, the perspective of classical 
safety or destruction ; a poor motive this for young intel- 
lects, and a motive all the more uncertain because a candi- 
date may always be saved by an act of grace — I mean of 
luck. Our boys work — or do not work — for eight or nine 
years, only thinking of their approaching freedom, because 
their daily contact is with " professors," and not with edu- 
cators, each master knowing nothing but his own special 
subject. The school is a juxtaposition of special subjects, 
while it should be, if we consider the skill of the teachers 
and the convergence of their efforts to a general end, a 
miniature " university." 

I have repeatedly stated that pre-eminence must be 
awarded to those who can organize, and inspire the organism 
when it is constructed. Now, in education the organizing 
unity cannot be on the mathematical or physical side, for 
these subjects are too remote from literature and art. It 
can only spring from literary instruction, which, without 
directive and formative ideas, is as a brainless polypus. Let 
us see if it does not spring from the science of man and 
human society. We hear it constantly stated that instruc- 
tion must be adapted to the needs of modern society; if 
classical instruction is not, in this connection, to be inferior 
to "special" instruction, if it is not to prepare the way for 
the triumphs of its rival under the name of "French" 
instruction, it must give a prominent position to moral, 
social, economic, and legal science, which will contribute to 
make education more practical and more modern, while at 
the same time increasing its speculative and practical value. 



CHAPTER I. 

MOEAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE SCHOOL THE ONLY 
SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM. 

In antiquity there were " many ideas on but few topics ; " 
we moderns have too few ideas on too many topics. The 
proportion is reversed. The thinking subject is stormed 
by objects too numerous to admit of attack in detaiL The 
ancients had the habit of concentration, systematization, 
and synthesis ; we are parcelled out and scattered broadcast 
by analysis. As the horizon becomes wider we must mount 
higher if we are to maintain our sovereignty; the endless 
increase of subjects in science, history, and literature makes 
a sounder philosophical culture imperative. This is a law, 
and, moreover, it is a law in mental evolution which our 
modern civilization may not evade. The classics can only 
maintain their position by elevating their aim, and by 
taking as their centre of perspective the moral and social 
idea. 

The unification of knowledge by its philosophical prin- 
ciples and conclusions is particularly necessary in France. 
It is, in fact, a native tendency of the French genius to look 
at everything from the general point of view, to analyze 
everything, to reason everything out. This tendency has 
become more and more manifest since the days of Descartes 
and the eighteenth century ; we cannot expect to destroy it, 
nor can we hope to change the national spirit. It has its 
inconveniences, no doubt, when a logical abstraction — akin 
to geometry — and a superficial or " simplifying " philosophy 



106 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

are enough to satisfy all requirements, but the remedy for 
abuse lies in a better use of our rationalism. Since the French 
people, careless as they generally are of tradition, and more 
and more composed of free-thinkers, endeavour to judge 
everything by reasons— and those reasons universal— do 
not let us leave it to journahsts, lawyers, and pohticians, to 
furnish the nation with a philosophy ; let us give to the 
moral and political training of the directing classes more 
solidity and a wider range. 

From the social point of view the main cause of our 
present uneasiness is the antinomy of ideas or of directions 
between different classes of society, or between different 
political parties; the principal remedy is to be found 
in all systems of instruction which take as their aim the 
organization of ideas with a view to final harmony. This 
is one reason the more for teaching our youth the elements 
of social, economic, and political science. The divergence of 
opinion between great writers on these subjects will be far 
less than the divergence which breaks out between minds 
left to their instincts alone, to their prejudices, to the quasi- 
instruction derived from the chance reading of a book, or of 
papers which flatter our illusions. Besides, those who have 
methodically studied great questions have, ipso facto, gained 
a most precious faculty, a faculty lacking in others, and 
especially lacking in French youths and men — the sense of 
difficulties. The study of mental science is alone able to 
check the intellectual and moral anarchy which threatens to 
divide us into sections, each of which, being confined to its 
own egoistic speciality, would eventually lose sight of the 
interests of the whole, and of the relation of everything to 
the national unity. Neither positive science nor a pm^ely 
literary training is an effectual remedy. Science, in fact, is 
centrifugal in its action, and if not counterpoised by philo- 
sophy will reduce the mind to the state of diffuse and form- 
less matter. If isolated in its operation it must in the 
long run make us " mechanical in everything." The reader 
will remember the celebrated receipt given by Pascal to 



MORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE SCHOOL. 197 

"manage machinery," and to put an end to imporfcunato 
questioning : "Practise, take holy water, and that will stupefy 
you." We may say — Practise solar equations, learn ready- 
made formulas and symbols, and you will be stupefied. In 
fact, the only way to escape the curiosity of philosophy and 
its salhes into the inner world and the great universe, will 
be the mechanical faith of which Pascal speaks, or that 
mechanical science, which, making the intellect almost an 
automaton, will, in the old sense o'f the word, be an " aU- 
tissemenV Will literature, which has also become quite 
formal, be a sufficient palliative for that literature which is art 
for the sake of art, style for the sake of style ? No ; verse 
will be written, such as we see already in France in our own 
time, rich in rhythm, but poverty-stricken as far as thought 
is concerned, and poetry will become a minor mechanical 
talent. 

From the pedagogic point of view, the evils with which 
we are threatened are the stifling of education by instruction, 
the growth of realism among the young, their mental 
passivity, the destruction of their power of concentration by 
analysis, and premature speciahzation. Moral and social 
science, the organization of which ought to be the main 
concern of the next century, are alone able to prevent these 
evils. 

In the first place, moral and social science have a unique 
privilege ; they constitute both the instruction most useful 
to all, and the most disinterested education, and thus they 
offer a solution to what may be termed the great antinomy 
of modern education. In fact, the scope of mental science 
is universal, and therefore its utility as a subject of instruc- 
tion is also universal. Psychology, logic, ethics, law, pohtical 
and social economy, are useful in all professions — scientific 
and literary alike — if only for the object of strengthening 
and making more supple what, as Bacon says, is the instru- 
ment of instruments, man himself. Besides, these sciences 
deal with man in his relation to humanity ; now, if it is 
inadmissible not to know the relations of man to the external 



198 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

objects of nature, it is, especially in these days, still more 
inadmissible not to know his relations with that other and 
ever-increasing world in which lies his true fatherland — 
human society. The principle practical " want " of modern 
societies is nothing but self-knowledge. 

On the other hand, moral and social science hpar excellence 
the subject which makes reflection imperative. Instead of 
keeping the attention on the external world, on the material 
of facts, it accustoms the student to trace such appearances 
to their inward reahty, to the spirit which animates and 
gives birth to them. It forces, so to speak, an examination 
of the intellectual consciousness ; the man who never 
indulges in introspection, who only sees by means of an 
existence which is superficial and dissipated outside his own 
ego, has not what may be called intellectual morality. The 
more natural science and the industrial arts advance, while 
the science of positive theology recedes, the more the 
necessity will be recognized of psychological, moral, and 
social science, to raise us gradually to a higher life ; ab 
exteriorihm ad, interiora, al) interiorihus ad sicperiora. And 
these sciences will at the same time develop to the utmost 
the sense of the real, because they are the only sciences 
which grasp reaUties in themselves. "We should never 
forget in France, the land of Descartes, that inner facts — • 
thoughts, sentiments, volitions — exist only because they 
appear, and because the condition of their existence is their 
being perceived, or, more strictly, their self-perception. 
When I am in pain, for example, I cannot ask myself if, 
behind the pain wMch is felt, there may not be some other 
and quite different pain or even pleasure. I can with 
difficulty analyze the complex causes of my pain, but the 
pain in itself is just what it is felt to be. It has been 
rightly said that the very heaven of a Laplace, although 
truer than the heaven of the ancients, is, nevertheless, only 
apparently a heaven ; but the consciousness of the humblest 
of men is the immediate apprehension of a real existence, of 
a life of which the existence is self-conscious, of an inner 



MORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE SCHOOL. 199 

world which is created the moment it is seen. Other 
sciences may develop the sense of abstract truth, but no 
other science can develop as readily the sense of the real ; 
now in our days the sense of the real is becoming more and 
more necessary. But it should not be applied merely to the 
realities of the physical world ; it should be especially 
applied to the realities of the moral and social world, which, 
by their extent and complexity, are beyond our grasp, and yet 
do not escape our judgment. Moral and social science have 
the peculiar advantage of being neither purely formal nor 
material ; and thus they by their very nature escape the two 
great pitfalls of modern education : the forgetting realities 
for form, or the absorbing all realities in mattei*. If instruc- 
tion were swamped by details of subjects necessary in industry, 
commerce, agriculture, jurisprudence, and politics, it would 
cease to be classical and liberal ; it does not cease to be 
liberal, but even becomes more liberal and also more practical 
if it includes the study of the great economic principles 
and the social laws which govern industry, commerce, 
agriculture, jurisprudence, and politics. It then moves in 
an environment which is at once highly positive and highly 
moral. As philosophy is, so to speak, the morality of science, 
so pohtical economy is the morality of industry, commerce, 
and agriculture ; natural law is the morality of legislation ; 
and social science is the morality of history and politics. 

In the second place, moral and social science avoid the 
reproach of passivity which the teaching of all other sciences 
incurs. To understand what is said to him, a boy learning 
moral or social science is bound to exert some mental effort. 
He is even forced to form a personal opinion on many 
questions, for he is not furnished with cut-and-dried judg- 
ments, nor do we teach him absolute dogmas. He is invited 
to find out for himself, to weigh the pros and cons ; he is 
induced to offer objections — in a word, his spirit of finesse 
is exercised, and that, too, on the greatest moral and social 
problems. No training in botany or chemistry can compare 
with this for developing or nourishing the intellect. Moral 



200 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

science alone affords at the same time an exercise of the 
faculties of the subject and a knowledge of the object ; it 
offers a unique instance of the coincidence of the two terms; 
it furnishes the young with a knowledge of the very faculties 
they develop in the study of literature and science, and the 
study of those faculties also develops them. If it is a disgrace 
for a naturalist not to be acquainted with the mechanism 
of his microscope, it is none the less a disgrace for a man of 
the nineteenth century to use his intellect when he is 
unacquainted with the laws that govern it. The method 
that is conscious, reflective, and which takes count of itself 
within itself is the best of mental gymnastics. When it is 
objected, with M. Frary, that a knowledge of the muscles 
or the bones is not necessary to walkmg, nor of the muscles 
of the reasoning power for reasoning, it is forgotten that in 
walking the knowledge of the means does not modify the 
results, while, when the thought is a subject of study to 
itself and while it reasons out its means of knowledge, its 
point of application is itself and not a foreign object. Can 
any one suppose that an analysis of their scientific processes 
and a philosophical exposition of their methods would have 
been useless to Descartes, to Leibnitz, or, in later years, to 
Claude Bernard ? 

In the third place, philosophy is the only subject in which 
the mind is not necessarily overloaded with multiplicity 
of detail; it is therefore a remedy for mental dispersion. 
This advantage is due to the nature of its object and of its 
method. The object of philosophy, rich — and even infinite 
— as it is, is, none the less, a single object : the mind, what 
constitutes man, what goes to make our " ego," and what, 
while varying with the individual, is nevertheless at bottom 
identical in all. Philosophical science has a further charac- 
teristic, viz. that the student is never able to grasp the part 
except in its relation to the whole ; philosophy is essentially 
systematic, and if it does not find the true co-ordination 
and subordination of things, it must imagine a provisional 
co-ordination, it must supply from its own resources the 



MORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE SCHOOL. 201 

connectiDg link. As its aim is unity, its method is necessarily 
unification. The two essential processes of this method are 
themselves processes of concentration, i.e. in the first place 
internal observation, bringing back the mind upon itself, 
and in the second place, speculation, which is essentially 
constructive and generalizing. Observation singles out the 
facts, and speculation supplies the ideas that link them 
together; but whether it is deahng with facts or ideas, 
philosophy always proceeds by concentration. On the other 
hand, so interdependent are different branches of moral 
science, that excessive specialization is practically impossible. 
Can we imagine a moralist, a logician, an enthusiast in 
aesthetics, or a cosmologist, who is not also a psychologist, 
or a psychologist who is neither a moralist, a logician, nor 
a cosm jlogist ? Although it may be the fashion nowadays 
to invite psychology to shut itself up between four walls as 
if it were a special science like entomology or meteorology, 
the science of man cannot be thus isolated, psychology 
cannot be severed from general philosophy and made into 
an absolutely " independent " study. The mind is not at 
work only when it is alive, and it lives solely by its relations 
with the whole world at whose enigmas it guesses, and with 
the human society of which it is a member ; further, it can 
only live by proposing itself a definite aim, and, ipso facto, its 
life is essentially moral. 

The objection may be raised that philosophical and social 
science will simply be one subject the more, bringing with it 
an increase in the general intellectual overpressure. If well 
organized, it would, on the contrary, be a simplification and 
a co-ordination of knowledge. Its general and synthetic 
views will give to the modern mind assistance comparable to 
schematic figures in physiology. If we had to follow the 
blood through all the ramifications of the veins and arteries 
the labour would be endless ; the important thing is to know 
how it circulates, from the heart to the head, and from the 
head to the heart. The cause of overpressure in the young 
is not the nnderstanding of the great laws either of nature 



202 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

or of society ; nor the acquisition of a synthetic knowledge 
of the phenomena of the material or human world, but the 
study of the different sciences in their infinite details, the 
application of calculation to the study of phenomena, in a 
word, the dealing in detail with a vast complexity. Guyau 
therefore rightly maintains that if the study of principles is 
useful to the higher order of minds, it is much more so to 
those that are incapable of unaided effort. The average 
mind may be able to retain a certain number of details, but 
what escapes it is the broad lines connecting facts together, 
the framework into which they fit, and the general system 
in which they find their unity. These broad lines, this 
system at once simple and extended, will not be learned 
from a scientific training, even if specialized in a definite 
direction ; philosophical training alone, by widening the 
mental horizon, can reveal these broad lines to it. If, there- 
fore, the work of boys in these days is to be lightened, the 
reduction should be on the special and descriptive, and not 
on the general and philosophical, the moral and social side 
of modern science ; in this case, to add is really to diminish 
the labour by simplifying and by reducing to order. Thought 
says Aristotle, is routed, as it were, by a multitude of facts, 
In war, if a coward refuses to advance, another hesitates, 
and then another, and then another, and all these individuals 
thus dispersed make up an army in themselves. Similarly, 
the general notion fixes the memory ; and the rout of 
thought is prevented by the grouping and orientation of 
ideas. Philosophy, reducing all truths to their ultimate 
principles and carrying them on to their conclusions, 
engraves them simultaneously on the reason and on the 
memory ; it makes the memory rational and the process of 
reasoning is never forgotten ; it is at once a logic and a 
memoria technka. To give to teaching a brain is, in fact, 
not a complication of the difficulty, but a solution. 

Thus from all points of view, whether that of mental 
exercise or nourishment, or of the supplying a formal or 
fundamental education, of extending its scope, or of unifying 



MORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE SCHOOL. 203 

it around its true centre of perspective, of conciliating the 
observation of the real and the feeling for the ideal, or the 
vision of what is and the conception of what should be, the 
spirit of observation and the spirit of speculation, the sense 
of individual and the sense of collective life, or " modern " 
and universal necessities — moral and social science must be 
awarded the first place in education, and especially in French 
education ; and all other subjects must be brought more 
and more within its reach ; we must, so to speak, moralize 
and socialize not only the study of natural science, but also 
the study of literature and history. Hence the problem— 
What are the different branches of moral science which 
should be taught our youth ? and in what order and at 
what age should they be taken up ? 



204 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER II. 

MOBAL AND CIVIC INSTRUCTION. 

Among the moral and social sciences the most essential in 
the education of our children is that in which instruction 
and education are more blended than in any other case, i.e. 
morals. Some educators prefer to leave morality to the 
spontaneous action of reading, conversation, and circum- 
stance ; they are afraid of the result of laying do^vn rules, 
of reasoning out what is good ; they believe that morality is 
not so much learned as inspired, and, as it were, "re- 
spired ; " that education should restrict its effects to the 
creation of an atmosphere or moral climate outside which 
life would be impossible. For this purpose in our higher 
schools the pupils are kept to literature and history ; it is 
supposed that for this purpose it is only necessary to read a 
certain number of fine passages from classical authors, or to 
hear in the words of historians the recital of heroic or wicked 
deeds, that this will suffice to create in our youth not only 
literary taste, but the moral sense. This empirical process 
may indeed be sufficient in the case of a race which is also 
receiving sound religious instruction and which has kept 
intact its theological faith ; but is it enough in a country 
like France, in which creeds are in process of dissolution ? 
If every idea, example, or passage read is a suggestion, can 
it be denied that literature and history do not give a 
plentiful supply of bad as well as of good suggestions ? All 
these disconnected and contradictory ideas, all these hasty 
and often opposed sentiments, must eventually combine with 



MORAL AND CIVIC INSTEUCTION. 205 

the natural tendencies of different characters, with the 
influences of the environment or of circumstances ; but will 
the final result be good or bad ? Sometimes the one, some- 
times the other. *' Moralizing " our youth is left to provi- 
dence or to chance. The results of this spontaneous morali- 
zation are not very satisfactory ; too often this system, or 
rather this absence of system, ends in spontaneous demorali- 
zation. Add to this the substitution of boarding-school 
life for family life, and jisk yourself if Virgil, Horace, 
Cicero, or Livy will be enough for the education of our 
youth. For the moral atmosphere to exist, some sort of 
organization of suggestions must be created ; we must be 
assured that, instead of remaining confused and unconscious, 
they will be divided into categories perfectly separate, dis- 
tinct, and therefore comparable ; from comparison spring 
choice, predominance, and order. If, on the contrary, a lad, 
already thoughtless by nature, is left exposed to every breath 
of influence, to every impulse whether good or bad, without 
any exertion of self-reflection, if he can neither resist nor 
voluntarily consent to the moral impression he receives from 
without, his will can only be formed in an imperfect, varying, 
and unstable fashion ; and the child will not gain that 
strength of character which is the basis of morality and the 
surest safeguard of a nation. 

In France it is rare to find a teacher who will introduce 
remarks on morality into his lessons on literature, history, 
or grammar ! M. Marion has done well in commenting on 
this in his report ; a timidity that is characteristically 
French checks the expression of moral truths on the lips of 
"the best intentioned, even the best of our educators." 
Our modesty is merely a check on our saying anything 
immoral, and not an incentive to " saying something moral." 
One of our writers once declared that never during his 
whole school-life did he hear a single word on moraUty, 
except in the philosophy class. And our undergraduates 
have the same complaint to make. I can, for my part, say 
the same. I never heard a single moral reflection even on 



206 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

a translation of the *'De Officiis." Send a lad to the 
primary schools in France, and he will receive a course of 
instruction in morality ; send him to a lycenm, and he will 
hear nothing of morality till he is sixteen or seventeen — if 
he stays at school so long. And this state of things will 
persist as long as our teachers of grammar and literature 
are not moralists, as long as they have not themselves had a 
preliminary course of morals applied to pedagogy, as long as 
they have had no philosophical culture, tested by severe 
examinations. Can it be supposed that a teacher of philo- 
sophy would blush to speak, with all the authority given 
him by science, to children of morality and civic duties, to 
teach them what they owe to their family and to their 
native land ? The false modesty of which I have just 
spoken is at bottom, in the case of our teachers of grammar, 
history, and literature, the modesty of ignorance. This is 
its only excuse. 

For this doubtful chance of spontaneous moralization by 
literature and history, I propose the substitution of a defi- 
nite doctrine of life, a scientific instruction in morality. 
There is a widespread prejudice against morality as a school 
subject on the ground that it is not scientific enough to be 
taught. In other words, this is an extension to the whole 
of morality of the uncertainties which may depend upon 
the absolute or relative character of its metaphysical prin- 
ciples, just as if we were to extend to geometry as a whole, 
and to all other sciences, the uncertainties which are due to 
the nature and subjective or objective character of space, 
time, motion, and force. The fact is that morality has a 
positive and perfectly scientific side as well as a metaphysical 
side. The latter, which is not the least important, should 
be reserved until the general subject of philosophy is taken 
up ; the former can be and ought to be taken up sooner. 
The scientific side of morality comprises what Guyau has 
called the rules of " the most intensive and extensive life 
both for the individual and for society." There are laws of 
conservative and individual progress which may be demon- 



MORAL AND CIVIC INSTRUCTION. 207 

strated ; and there are no less certain laws of social con- 
servation and social progress. Life in common has neces- 
sary conditions which can be scientifically determined, and 
the subordination of the individual to the group of which he 
is a part, to the national community, is one of these con- 
ditions. The positive, utihtarian, and evolutionary schools 
may furnish us here with an ample harvest of facts and 
laws, to constitute the positive side of morality, the science 
of manners properly so called, and the science of society. 
In the second place should come what I call the aesthetics of 
maimers, i.e. the consideration of the good from the point 
of view of beauty, and no longer merely from that of utihty 
or social necessity. Finally these should merge, in the 
higher classes, in the general yliilosoijliy of manners, which 
seeks the ultimate basis of the good in the relations of man 
to the universe, and to the principle of universal evolution, 
whatever it may be. There is therefore, on the whole, in the 
moral good both public and private utility, an aesthetic 
beauty, and a philosophical rationality which may be the 
objects of transmission to others ; in this sense, as Socrates 
said, "virtue can be taught." Will a child be egoistic 
when he is shown all that his family, his country, and 
society as a whole have given him, and are every moment 
giving him, and all that he owes them in return, when he 
has acquired a clear idea and a keen sense of national and 
international solidarity, and when at the same time he will 
have fathomed the idea of the human being and its peculiar 
dignity 1 As each idea is a force — especially in France — ■ 
the idea of what is best to be done will obviously have a 
greater power of realization. The ideal, by the very fact of 
its being conceived, is already realized in our thoughts. 
Certainly we are none the more convinced that it will 
realize itself in action, because other ideas and especially 
other sentiments or tendencies may enter into a conflict 
with it ; but the clearer and more precise the idea of the 
lest, the more chance will it have of emerging triumphant 
from the inward struggle. The outer suggestion of the idea 



208 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

is one of the essential factors in the final resolution. The 
unconscious factors which make up the character are doubt- 
less of great importance, and it may even be said that 
reason is composed of (1) unconscious factors ; (2) con- 
scious factors ; (3) the circumstances of the moment. But 
the consciousness reacts on the unconscious forces at work 
within ns ; it judges them and thereby modifies them. The 
intellect is not a kind of tribunal external to us, and having 
to appeal to a foreign power for aid in carrying out its 
decrees ; self -judgment is self -reward, or self-punishmeut ; it 
is also the beginning of the amendment of one's own cha- 
racter ; we have only to set ourselves in the right direction, 
for certain traits of the moral featm-es to become more 
salient, while others recede into the shade. The intellect, 
like all our faculties, aims at self-satisfaction, and if it does 
not succeed in satisfyiug itself, we feel a sense of inward 
discord which may be so powerful as to severely wound us. 
Now, the intellect has something universal and impersonal 
about it ; it looks at things in a general and disinterested 
fashion, just as the eye which, in spite of our efforts, hfts us 
out of ourselves in order to bring "into our view an indefi- 
nitely extended horizon, lighted up by a light which attracts 
our gaze. The intellect therefore begins to develop the 
ego ; it is, like a look, essentially altruistic. It is also, as 
Kant says, law-making. It tends to erect everything into 
a law, but its nature is to lay hold of the law wMch alone 
can satisfy it. So natural is this tendency, that we always 
raise our actions to the dignity of maxims or theories. 

Thus the so-called wisdom of nations furnishes " maxims " 
for evil as well as for good. In a word, we always wish to 
elevate facts to the dignity of ideas. A fault in conduct is 
a sophism in action, and as Dante tells us, even the devil is 
a " good logician." A sound study of morality can alone 
substitute truth for the sophisms of the heart ; it alone can 
raise the thoughts of a young man to the consideration of 
his universal ends, to the reflective consciousness of his 
national function — be it scientific or Hterary — as well as of 



MORAL AND CIVIC INSTRUCTION. 209 

the relations which exist between that function and the 
weal of the conntiy, of the whole of humanity. We must 
therefore introduce into lay education what is customary in 
religious education — the constant action on the sentiments 
and also the constant action on the ideas, of a more and 
more profound study of moral principles and their applica- 
tions. 

In the primary schools morality is taught, but the children 
in our Ij-ceums receive no instruction in this subject. Is the 
mere fact of birth and status enough to grant or deny the 
privilege of learning morality ? Or are the teachers in 
the Ijxeums less capable of teaching children morality than 
the teachers in the primary schools .^ The boys who are 
going through a " special " course learn morality after 
thirteen or fourteen, and the girls at lyceums also receive 
similar instruction. It is therefore only in the case of the 
*' humanities " properly so called that everything is taught 
but human morality, public or private. This anomaly must 
cease. 

It may perhaps be urged that there are special difficulties 
in the case of the secondary schools ; the teacher will not 
know if he may pronounce the name of God, or if he may 
teach at least a spiritual morality. But in reality there is 
no difficulty. In the programme of " special " instruction 
we find, "Religious rights and corresponding daties : the 
role of the religious sentiment in morality. The sanctions 
of morality. The future life of God." For the first school 
examination in literature (B. es L.) we find, "Eeligious 
morality. Duties towards God. - God, His existence and 
attributes. The immortality of the soul." There is therefore 
no reason whatever why the name of God should not be 
mentioned in our secondary schools, especially as we read in 
the syllabus for primary schools, "The teacher is not expected 
to give a course ex 'professo on the nature and attributes of 
God ; he is to closely connect in the child's mind the idea 
of a first cause and of the perfect being with a sentiment of 
respect and veneration, and he is to accustom each child to 
16 



210 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

treat with that respect the noHon of a God, even when 
presented to it under a different form than that of its own 
religion." 

This wise hmitation, which sets in the foreground not a 
dogma, but an idea, a notion of God, has been blamed by 
certain sections ; and no doubt fresh recriminations might 
be expected if moral instruction were organized in our 
secondary schools. But these recriminations arise because 
necessary distinctions have not been di-awn. The teaching 
of morals should not be *' sectarian," for then it would 
stifle liberty of conscience, but it does not follow that moral 
instruction ought to be absolutely without any reference to 
any philosophical doctiine, nor even that all allusions to the 
idea of G-od shoald be banished from it, as is the case with 
the names of the Virgin, of the saints, of Luther, and of 
Calvin. And further, in the present tone of feehng with 
respect to religious matters, far from being opposed to the 
lay spirit of instruction, general notions on the origin and 
role of the idea of God are one of the surest means of sus- 
taining the lay spirit and of combating clerical pretensions. 
It is, in fact, in order to separate the idea of God from 
its sectarian accessories that it is important to speak to 
children of it in a broad and liberal fashion. We must 
make them understand that this idea of God — this "hypo- 
thesis," or belief, if you prefer it so— is not necessarily 
connected with the dogmas of confession, communion, 
damnation, etc. By these means the spirit of tolerance, 
which is so rare among us even now, will be gradually 
instilled into our youth. But if, on the contrary, we preserve 
absolute silence on these questions, we give the impression 
that they are unphilosophical and merely theological, and 
thereby we let loose in our country all fanaticism, both 
religious and anti-religious. Even the adversaries of positive 
religions are therefore defeating their own ends by wishing 
to proscribe what they call "natural religion," and by 
accustoming the children to confound (as they are sure to 
do of themselves) philosophical opinions with theological 



MORAL AND CIVIC IXSTliUCTIOX. 211 

do,2;mas. Whatever views may be lield of posifcive rcli£>-ioiis 
and even of "natural religions," the dilferent forms 
assumed by faith in a higlicr principle in the universe 
have one common basis, whether good or bad,- and this basis 
is especially of a moral order. Now, it can scarcely be 
maintained that a youth should remain in ignorance of the 
reasons and sentiments which are the common basis of 
different religions in all civilized countries. The avoidance 
of dogma makes it essential to explain the reasons, tbe 
absolute or relative value of which the child in later years 
will learn to appreciate. Sach an instruction is all the more 
admissible because in all religions and in all philosophies, 
from Kant to our own day, the idea of God is represented 
as an object of pure belief or of "faith," principally of 7noral 
faith, and never as an object of science or demonstration. It 
would be even as contrary to religious orthodoxy as to con- 
temporary philosophy to attempt to "demonstrate" the 
existence and attributes of God as if it were a theorem in 
geometry or a law in physics. The idea of God cannot rest 
upon our " science," but, on the contrary, on our theoretical 
ignorance of the secret of existence, and on our conception 
of our practical ideal. The ignorance of what is beneath 
everything, with the thought of what ought to le, and of 
what we ourselves wish to find there, are the two philo- 
sophical principles of all belief in God. I do not say that 
these principles necessarily involve this belief as the premisses 
of a syllogism involve the conclusion, for it would not be then 
a really " voluntary belief," but these two reasons, sufficient 
or not from the point of view of pure logic, should be 
familiar to everybody, and that an education not dealing with 
the question would be incomplete. The philosophy of 
religions is, in fact, a part of philosophy, whatever conclusions 
are drawn for or against the " irreligion of the future." * 

* The author of " L'Jrreligion de I'avenir " has admirably said, "Anti- 
religious fanaticism is almost as dangerous as religious fanaticism. We 
all know how Erasmus compared humanity to a drunken man hoisted on a 
horse, and at every moment falling now to the right and now to the left. 



212 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

Let pliilosopher and priest each do what he believes to be 
best, but do not let their rivalry degenerate into hatred or 
mutual warfare. The philosopher should forget less than 
others that truth is always relative, especially as far as the 
ultimate basis of the being, the secret of existence, and the 
supreme end of life are concerned. If there are myths and 
symbols in religion, the philosopher and savant should 
recognize that there is also something symbolic, imaginative, 
and, if I may say so, something mythical in the most abstract 
conceptions of metaphysics or even of science. And 
materialistic conceptions are not free from this charge ; they 
are even more open to it than others. In fact, they hold 
everything to be formed of atoms, i.e. of grains of dust, as 
it were, having representable forms, and these atoms they 
believe are for ever whirling around in space. There is 
something essentially mythological about this conception, and 
rare ingenuity is required before we can believe that this 
dance of tiny cubes or spheres is the basis of being, life, 
sentiment, and thought. If religions are anthropomorphic, 
materialism is hylomorphic, and it is doubtful if it is there- 
fore any nearer the insoluble problem of being. SavanUj 
metaphysicians, and priests may all say with the poet — 

"Nous contemplons I'obscur, I'inconnu, Tin visible; 
Kous sondons le reel, I'ideal, le possible ; 

Nous regardons trembler I'ombre indetermince." 

Very often the enemies of religion have committed the blunder of despising 
their adversaries ; this is the worst of blunders. . . . Among well-educated 
people they sometimes produce a violent reaction against religious pre- 
judices, and this reaction often persists through life, but in a certain 
number this reaction is followed in time by a counter-reaction; and, as 
Spencer remarks, it is only when this counter-reaction has been sufficient 
that we can formulate less narrow and more comprehensive judgments on 
religious questions, with a full knowledge of the circumstances. Every- 
thing widens in us in time, as do the concentric circles traced out by the 
movement of the sap in the trunks of trees. Life calms us as well as death, 
and reconciles us to those who do not think or feel as we do. . . . Is there 
not something fraternal in the thoughts of men?" (Guyau, " L'lrreligion 
de I'avenir," p. xxvi.). 



MORAL AND CIVIC INSTRUCTION. 213 

If, then, the human mmd is necessarily in the domain of 
the relative, absolutism is a still more intolerable and more 
illogical abuse in the philosopher who, while believing- he is 
nearer the truth, should nevertheless remember that he is 
always translating it into human language, or, strictly 
speaking, into imagery. Substance, cause, force, end, being, 
essence, soul, God, and even matter, are so many images, so 
many metaphors, so many symbolical translations of an 
impenetrably obscure text. Let us therefore be tolerant, 
and not object if, apart from any religious confessions, our 
children are given a vague notion of a God in whom the 
human race hopes, instead of a notion of primal matter 
(which is scarcely more intelligible), of substance, or of 
force. Even to the atheist the idea of God is still the loftiest 
symbol of the moral idea in process of realization in the 
world and in humanity. And more, the absolute negation 
of all moral power immanent in the world and guiding it, is 
but another dogma, at bottom as impossible to demonstrate 
as theism. Who can assert that there is no moral spring in 
the universe, that the world, although it has produced 
moral beings, is in its principle absolutely 7ion moral, and 
even immoral ? And, in default of demonstrable truth and 
certainty, does this doctrine offer so many public or private 
advantages that it should be taught to our youth ? It would 
be a fine discovery for children and a great encouragement 
to their teachers to tell them at the outset. The universe is 
the arena of a conflict of brute forces, unregulated and 
unrestrained by any moral spring ; our ideal of an infinite 
good is a chimera unknown to nature and never to be 
realized ; the absence of morality is fundamental in nature, 
and our so-called morality is only a social utility, purely 
relative to man's ideas ! It is clear that the educator can- 
not teach such a doctrine in the name of the State. The 
contrary idealistic and theistic belief is that of almost all, 
with the exception of a certain number of philosophers, or 
of men whose minds are imbued with philosophical ideas. 
The latter are not compelled to send their childi-en to the 



214 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

State schools. And why should the personal ideas of the 
parent be exclusively respected in those schools, while 
the general ideas and sentiments of the nation would have 
no clairu to respect ? One of two things must happen — 
either the child will be educated alone, and then his 
" liberty of conscience " will not be affected in the least, or 
he cannot be educated alone, and then how can we be silent 
on the ideas which have been traditional from generation to 
generation in the fatherland ? If a parent entrusts his 
child to the care of the State, he should consent to allow it 
to be exposed to the common influence. As for those who 
can bring up their own children, let them teach them as 
their conscience permits, but let them recognize that they 
are really only substituting one influence for another. 

If the State were willing to abandon all control under the 
pretence of exclusively protecting the " opinion of i)arents," 
thus invested with the dignity of a dogma, we must then 
proscribe all moral teaching of any kind in our schools ; we 
must not blame suicide before children, for their father may 
percliance approve of self-destruction ; nor must we blame 
free love, for their father may approve thereof ; nor must 
we speak of public order, the law, and the constitution, for 
the parents may be anarchists. Suppress the name of the 
fatherland, and take away its flag, for some socialists look 
upon the flags of countries as so many differently coloured 
illusions, and upon the fatherland as a kind of rehgious 
idolatry, a metaphysical entity, opposed to humanitarian 
ideas ; some socialists recognize neither French nor Germans, 
but only proletariats and their enemies the capitahsts. 
" Our country," to the disabused sceptic is a phrase as 
suspected of ideology as the name of God, and it is certain 
that if crimes had been committed in the name of the one, 
they have also been committed in the name of the other. 

I think that the best method of acting on the morality of 
the young, and that apart from religious opinions, would be 
to present morality from the civic and patriotic points of 
view. According to the reports of the teachers and in- 



MORAL AND CIVIC INSTKUCTIOX. 215 

spectors of schools on the results of moral insfcruction, the 
ideas aud sentiraents of patriotism have made the most 
remarkable progress in the hearts of our youth. Nowadays, 
it appears, we need rather to moderate than to restrain 
national enthusiasm in the children of our schools. In the 
secondary schools, internal discipline and moral education 
mio-ht be presented as essential forms of civic duty, and they 
would, in this new aspect, be accepted by all. Life in our 
secondary schools should afford an apprenticeship to national 
life ; respect for school rules should be an initiation into 
respect for national law, and a preparation for military dis- 
cipline ; children must be taught that their native country is 
in need of generations knowing not by blind but by voluntary 
submission how to obey a law of which their reason recog- 
nizes the necessity. And I think that the whole subject 
might well be included in our lessons to the boys on their 
duty to their country. The national role of school-life 
must be clearly exhibited, and idleness must be displayed in 
its true colours — ingratitude to the fatherland. If we are 
teaching French grammar, speak to them of their country, 
its language, its influence, and the duty incumbent on all to 
hand on its glorious traditions. If we are teaching Latin, 
speak again of their country and its relations with the 
Eoman world and Roman literature. If science, tell of the 
scientific reputation their country has to maintain, of its 
industry, and of the arts, and how they are threatened by 
foreign competition. Similarly, we must give a civic colour 
to moral ideas ; this will be the best way of bringing 
together religious and lay instruction. What minister of 
religion could object to the representatives of the State 
speaking in the name of the fatherland of duties to the 
fatherland ? Just as all duty in the eyes of the believer is 
duty toward God, so to one who loves his country, all 
duty becomes a duty to it.* 

* I take the official programme of morals, am^ with a f&\y slight 
alterations apjtend it here as a programme of moral and civic instruction 
a lapteJ for Euglish schools ; — 



216 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

I. The country, the nation. — What is a nation ? A collection of 
individuals? The true and the false in the theories of the social contract 
and of the social organ. sm. The solidarity of generations. The national 
spirit ; what constitutes it ? Great Britaiu. 

II. The private individual. — What he should be in the interests of liis 
country. The good and bad qualities of the English, etc., and especially 
of the youths of this country. Private virtues necessary to the citizen — 
truthfulness, courage, work, temperance, etc. Social effects of private 
vices ; their consequences to the nation as a whole. 

III. The family. — Its necessity to the country; its essential function in 
the national organism. Its moral and civic constitution. The family 
spirit ; its good and bad effects in this country. Family duties — parents 
and children ; brothers and sisters ; servants. 

IV. S'.hool, etc. — Its place in the country. Duties of school-boy to 
masters and school-fellows. Apprenticeship in civic and moral virtues. 
Idleness dishonourable because ingratitude to one's country. The classics ; 
their national and patriotic character. Why we learn our native literature. 
Greek, Latin, science, history, philosophy. Literary and scientific 
greatness of this country ; its intellectual influence. 

V. Relations of citizens to each other. — Mutual rights and duties. 
Respect for the human person and for the fatherland in the person of 
others. Slavery ; serfdom ; the part played by this country in their 
abolition. Respect for our fellow-citizens, for their honour. Defamation, 
calumny. The excesses of the press. 

Respect for the creeds and opinions of our fellow-citizens. Religious 
and philosophic liberty ; religious, philosophical, and political toleration. 
Religious and anti-religious fanaticism ; political fanaticism and party 
rancour ; their danger from the patriotic point of view. Great Britain 
should be united 

Respect for the human person in its pi'operty. The principles of 
property. Its necessity from the social, national, and international stand- 
points. Property in this country. Justice and fraternity. Charity and 
its various forms. Devotion. 

VI. The state and the laws. — The foundations of public authority. The 
constitution of this country. The true and false meaning of national 
sovereignty. The government. Its different forms ; their advantages and 
danj-ers. Our good and bad points from the political point of view. 
Political instability and its perils. The revolutionary spirit. 

The army, the soldier. Conscription. Military discipline. Military 
courage in this country. Our merits and defects in victory or defeat. 

Duties of a citizen to the state. Obedience to the laws, payment of 
taxes, voting, etc Rights of the citizen. Individual liberty ; liberty 
of conscience, liberty of work, liberty of union. Duties and rights of the 
government. Dangers of authority and anarchy. True and false liberty. 
Tiue and false equality. Advantages and abuses of the spirit of equality 



MORAL AND CIVIC INSTRUCTION. 217 

in this country. Increasing difficulty and gravity of social questions in 
these days. 

VII. International relations. — International rights and duties. Inter- 
national solidarity. All questions should be considered from the inter- 
national point of view. Humanity. The love of humanity and its 
reconciliation with the love of one's country. Patriotism true and false. 
Humanitarianism true and false. 

VIII. The universe. — The universal fatherland. Universal sympathy. 
Love of nature. Duties towards the inferior beings. Man, a citizen of the 
world. 

IX. Tlie ideal union of minds. — Creeds relative to a spiritual country 
and a heavenly city. Kant's "reign of ends." Importance of creeds 
from the point of view of public and private morality. The respect due 
from the state and the individual to those creeds in their different forms ; 
natural or moral religions (Kant), positive religions. 

The sanctions of morality. Sanctions of the conscience ; social 
sanctions; the basis of the penalty. Creeds relative to a supreme 
sanction. 

Limits of positive science — the unknowable. The modesty of the term 
savant. Metaphysical and moral basis of the belief in an invisible world, 
and in the final triumph of morality in the universe. 

To some programme of this kind, which might be developed for boys 
between thirteen and fourteen, add the programme of "civic instruction, 
common law, and political economy" already in use in the French primary 
schools. Would a course of moral and civic instruction thus present in a 
more or less elementary but scientific and interesting form, with examples 
borrowed from history, be useless to boys receiving a classical education, 
which is at present indifferent to their moralization as school-boys, as 
men, and as citizens? 



218 EDUCATION FliOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER III. 

HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL INSTRUCTION. 

I. If badly taus^ht, instruction in history is swamped by the 
details of dry and ijiso facto uninteresting facts.* Well taught, 
and connected with general ideas, historical instruction 
becomes an essential part of education. The person with 
no notion of history is as new to the world as a child, or as an 
orphan which has never seen its parents. He will lack the 
sense of human and national solidarity. He also lacks the 
sense of time — an essential factor in all that is permanent ; 
he will be the dupe of every abstract Utopia, improvised and 

* Take the class in history as we too often find it ; we see the same 
operation of cramming that we have already seen in the science classes; 
the ideal is the transt'orraation of the boys into phonographs. The follow- 
ing occurs in a note-book: "The new king of France, Eudes (887-898), 
wished to be recognized iu Aquitaine. While he was in the south, a 
posthumous son of Louis the Stammerer, Charles IV., called the Simple, 
was proclaimed king in a great assembly held at Rheims. Arnulf, king 
of Germany, who was also indirectly connected with the Carlovingians 
and who was still inspired by ambitious longings for imperial power in 
sj)ite of the ' great protestation ' of 887, received the claimant at a Diet 
of Worms, and declaring himself his protector, ordered the counts and 
bishops on the Meuse to support him. Eudes prevailed in the end, but 
consented to acknowledge Charles as his liege lord, giving up to him the 
district between the Meuse and the Seine. Eudes remained king, but 
Charles did not become emperor. Eudes died in 898, and Charles the 
Simple bec.ime sole king. Robert, the brother of Eudes, inherited his 
duchy of France. . . ." Boys will learn these shorthand (or next to 
shorthand) notes ; and will commit to memory the names and the dates. 
The same will be done for the other reigns. Thus taught, history is the 
worst of intellectual gymnastics. 



HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL INSTRUCTION. 219 

constructed with reference neither to time nor history. The 
first dreamer he meets will be able to convince him that in 
his own country and in the world everything can be 
changed in a day. He has no idea either of historical 
progress or of historical continuity. The partisans which 
make the history of France begin with the Revolution, for 
in.^tance, are either ignorant of history or are deliberately 
falsifying its teaching. Unfortunately, nothing can be 
falsified so easily as history. Further, there is much to be 
said on the question of the " morality of history," as it is 
taught nowadays, as well as on the question of the morality 
of nature. M. Lavisse himself confesses as much in his enthu- 
siastic report on the instruction in history (which, it seems, 
he would gladly substitute for instruction in philosophy). 
It is not true that the just are always rewarded, and the 
wicked always punished. M. Lavisse confesses that " false- 
hood and violence are often successful, and the practical value 
of their success is not diminished by the immorality of the 
means employed." It is no longer true that the destinies 
of a nation can be only explained by its virtues and its 
vices : " other elements enter into the fortunes and the 
power of a nation." Too often, in history, "faults are 
worse than crimes," and they are expiated neither by the men 
nor by the generations which have committed them. Hence, 
if there is any morality in history, it is there incognito, if I 
may parody a celebrated mot. In spite of these premisses, 
although history too forcibly resembles the struggle for exist- 
ence in nature, it is to the teacher of history that M. Lavisse 
would entrust civic and even moral training. As for the 
teacher of philosophy, M. Lavisse would willingly relegate 
him to the universities. If the historian is also a moralist, 
well and good, nothing is more desirable ; but how will he 
be able to impregnate his lessons in history with moraUty ? 
That is the question. " There are no panegyrists," answers 
M. Lavisse, " for confessed scoundrels." Are we quite sure 
of that, if the scoundrels have succeeded ? " The teaclier 
will dwell upon the history of honourable men, ivlien they 



220 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

occur 171 the lesson.'''' This is a rather disquieting restriction. 
To tell the truth, the most beautiful and most moral side of 
history is its legendary side : the Chevalier d'Assas who 
becomes Sergent Dubois ; Cambronne's saying, " La garde 
meurt," etc. *' Literature and science make the honourable 
and cultured man," continues the eminent historian ; " it is 
history which must prepare the boy for life at a given date, 
and under definite conditions." And M. Lavisse himself 
has put into practice this method in the very remarkable 
books he has published for the primary schools. " Our 
disasters," he tells our children, " teach us not to love those 
ivho hate us, but to love our native land before all and 
above all, and humanity afterwards." We fear that this 
method of teaching the morality of history — almost inevitable 
in the mere historian, is only sowing the wind to reap the 
tempest. 

This is certainly not the way to introduce those moral ideas 
without which history is only a long and blood-stained story 
of internal and external hatred and strife — the record of 
the nightmare of humanity. I think that history should be 
used to establish the positive bases of true social science, and 
thus alone will it be moral, because it will throw into relief 
certain moral and political conditions without which a 
nation can be neither great nor strong. Comte was right 
Avhen he said that societies have demonstrable laws of 
" existence or equiUbrium " forming a body of social statics, 
and of "movement or development," forming "social 
dynamics." Mill gives as examples the following laws which 
express the minimum conditions of social stability : (1) A 
system of education including a restraining disci pHne which 
is opposed to the natural tendency of mankind to anarchy. 
(2) The existence of a feeling of allegiance to a common 
God or gods, the guardians of the State, or to certain 
persons representing the State, or to laws, ancient liberties 
and ordinances. " In all political societies which have had 
a durable existence, there has been some fixed point ; some- 
thing which people agreed to hold sacred." (3) The existence 



HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL INSTliUCTION. 221 

of a strong and active principle of cohesion among the 
members of the same community or State, which makes 
them feel that they are one people. And Mill shows that 
without these conditions a nation is virtually in a state 
of ^ civil war and cannot, in fact, avoid civil war for long. * 
History has therefore its morahty, not in the sense that 
tyrants are punished and the good rewarded, but in the 
sense that there are certain social and poUtical rules which 
a nation cannot with impunity transgress. Only in social 
science is the significance and educative value of history to 
be found. If it be objected that social science is still in a 
somewhat embryonic stage, the answer is that the few 
traths already established in its domain are far superior to 
all apphcations made without reference to any regular 
method by professional historians, who, however, are quite 
content with their applications, and even change from one 
application to another when dealing with the same facts. 
Each historian arranges his picture of events as he pleases, 
and in whatever perspective or on whatever plane he pleases • 
a history of the same incidents may end in an apotheosis or 
an anathema. 

M. Lavisse hands over to the teacher of history not only 
moral education, but civic and political instruction. He 
requires the teacher of contemporary history " to reserve the 
necessary time at the end of the course to treat theoretically, 
hut iviih the aid of facts, the main questions of the day! 
What political party does not claim that facts are on its 
side, and cannot effectively quote a goodly number of facts 
in its favour ? Physical facts have a definite significance, 
but there are historical facts for everybody and "for every 
cause : p^o and con a monarchy, fro and con a republic ; 
everything depends on the disposition of the facts as of the 
pawns on a chess-board. There is nothing more unm.eaning 
than most historical facts, unless we make them mean some- 
thing more doubtful still when we want them to mean 



Mill 



's "Logic," ii. pp. 520, 521 (TV.). 



222 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

anything. M. Taine draws his " little facts " into line and 
orientates them as he pleases. Orators on each side of the 
House will draw their arguments from history. History, 
and especially contemporary history, proves everything and 
nothing. Even the events of our own age are as yet only 
documents, the final value of which is uncertain. The 
history of Napoleon I., for example, is not yet written. 
Kead Lanfrey after Thiers, and Taine after Lanfrey, and 
draw a conclusion if you can. At the foot of the mountain 
we cannot see the whole horizon, the relative size and 
position of objects around us ; we must go further up and 
cUmb higher. Instruction in contemporary history, being 
purely and simply a narrative of great events, becomes more 
and more adventurous ; of all forms of instruction it should 
be the freest from appreciations, and a fortiori from theories. 
It has on several occasions been debated whether it is right 
to allow the teaching of contemporary history to continue. 
M. Maneuvrier, among others, is afraid that teachers may 
awaken legitimate susceptibilities. How is it possible not 
to stir the heart of our youth when we are telling them of 
the events in which their friends, relations, and fathers 
have taken a part ? " You have before you the children of 
the conquerors and of the conquered." We must banish 
from secondary schools everything that by wounding the 
feelings of others may give life to the fatal germs of hatred ; 
" let the feeling of comradeship give us in a measure for a 
few years the illusion of fraternity, and make us an un- 
divided country." I do not think, however, that the course 
of contemporary history should be suppressed ; it is sufficient 
to restrict it to the exhibition of uncontested and uncon- 
testable facts, upon which it is not possible to have an 
individual opinion. 

II. If contemporary history, taking the form of political 
doctrine, of necessity gives pain to some, it is because it has 
necessarily to do with persons, and constitutes, in fact, a 
series of "personalities." On the other hand, pure theory, 



HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL INSTRUCTION. 223 

expoundud by a philosopher, can give no pain to tliose wlio 
hold a contrary conviction, becanso ideas are essentially 
impersonal. If you are a monarchist, yon cannot deny the 
existence of a theory of republican government ; nor, if you 
are a republican, the existence of a theory of monarchical 
government. Between the two theories you have a free choice, 
but, if your choice is to be enlightened and effectively free, 
it is well for you to be familiar with both. How, then, can 
a young man or a father, whatever his opinions, object to 
a teacher's exhibiting in a purely philosophical manner the 
guiding principles of the various forms of government, the 
advantages claimed by each, the peculiar dangers besetting^ 
them, and the means we may have of gaining the advan- 
tages and avoiding the dangers ? These are the problems of 
pure science. Given a democratic government, it is clear 
it has certain duties to fulfil. Given a republican constitu- 
tion, it is clear that every man who is at all enlightened and 
devoted to his country ought to know the principles of its 
constitution ; the revision of that constitution is continually 
called for by those who do not even know its principles. If 
we have two Houses instead of one, no doubt there is some 
theoretical reason, good or bad, in favour of this system, and 
this system must have prevailed over others. If the President 
of the Republic is given a kind of veto by the constitution 
(and few Frenchmen know this), and can suspend the 
promulgation of a law which seems to him to be dangerous, 
and can compel the Parliament to discuss it again and pot 
it to a second vote, it is no doubt because the idea was to 
have at the head of the State some one quite different from 
a President without power and the very humble servant of 
the chambers. Let us even suppose that the teacher of 
philosophy lets his personal political opinions be seen, his 
pupils need take no offence ; it cannot hurt your feelings to 
know that I am a republican or a monarchist. But it is 
offensive to teach the " history " of the republic and to call 
all repnl)licans fools or brigands, or the " history " of the 
monarchy and treat all monarchists as tyrants and traitors 



224 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

to their country.* It follows that nothing is more fruitless 
than politico-historical discussions. Men cannot agree upon 
either men, or tilings, or the course of events, or the lessons 
to be learned therefrom. Has either learned anything from 
the other ? Not in the least ; each leaves off with the 
same convictions as he began, but often more embittered. 
That politico-philosophical discussions do not lead to 
harmony of opinion may also be true ; but the minds 
engaged therein do at least learn some ideas, some of the 
elements in the solution of the problem, from each other, 
and each of these ideas will eventually, whatever theory be 
preferred, have a relative valae in the ememlU. To 
discuss the events or the men of the French Revolution, 
Eobespierre, Danton, etc., is so much waste time ; to discuss 
the principles of '89, and the theories connected therewith, 
and you may try in vain to keep to your own personal con- 
victions in the long run, your opponent's system (even if 
you do not admit it) must have taught you something. I 
think therefore that the teacher of philosophy can alone 
give to elementary instruction in politics that degree, of 
elevation and serene impartiality which is more necessary 
here than elsewhere ; these lofty questions should be reserved 
for instruction in philosophy at sixteen or seventeen years 
of age. 

Our classical training must always rank below "special" 
instruction, until both have on their programmes "civic 
instruction, common law, and poUtical economy." As M. 
Levisse justly remarks, a boy at the lyceums may be an 
elector in three, two, or even one year after his school-life is 
over. Civic instruction is therefore more imperative in this 
case than in the primary schools. As for political economy, 
apart from its utility in industry, commerce, and finance, it 
alone can prevent the boy, when a man, from giving ear to 

* Vide the " Manuels civiques " of Paul Bert (a savant gone astray in 
politics), and read the outrageous and false description of the old regime, 
followed by the enthusiastic and equally false description of the 
Revolutionary epoch. 



HISTORICAL AND TOLITICAL IXSTEUCTION. 225 

the dreams of any ntopisfc ; it exhibits the true relations 
between capital and labour, the reciprocal value of intellectual 
and manual labour ; what thrift, uuion, etc., can do. The 
study of economic and social questions is imposed on all, 
because, in modern and democratic states, the only way to 
preserve internal harmony is to decrease misery as wealth 
increases, and to augment the average comfort. First, in the 
primary schools, we must introduce and develop the true 
principles of social economy. It has been truly said that 
every artisan philosophizes in his own way ; we must take 
precautions that he does not philosophize wrongly. Without 
such precautions we may be sure that the moral, social, and 
religious doctrines of the working classes will be the height 
of the absurd ; such a spectacle we see at the present 
moment. Misdirected fanaticism, the revolutionary utopia, 
an utterly false conception of life, society, and the State, 
form the basis of the philosophy of the working classes. 
To bring economic science within the reach of the masses is 
therefore a vital problem for democracy. But this is not 
enough ; our middle classes should be familiar with true 
economic principles. Not by keeping the children of the 
middle classes in ignorance of economics and social ques- 
tions can we make them capable of resisting the ever- 
swelling wave of socialism. 



17 



226 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT 



CHAPTER ly. 

LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS. 

I. I:n"STRUCTIok in literature is as much in need of organiza- 
tion and unification as moral and liistorical instruction. 
Reform is necessary, but should it be in the same direction 
as the preceding ? I think not. We have seen that reforms 
in France during the last few years have had a realistic 
tendency with regard to methods, and a utilitarian tendency 
with regard to results ; first it was proposed to completely 
suppress Greek and Latin, and afterwards, when the utility 
of the classics was recognized, it was proposed to give them 
a practical end. The end which these reformers had in 
view may be stated as follows : More time for science and 
modern languages, dead languages to be learned with the 
minimum of grammar by means of running translations and 
oral explanations, instead of the written exercises and active 
methods of the past, — in fact, the idea was to get our boys 
to read classical authors in the shortest possible time. The 
object being to make us " know " the literature of antiquity, 
it was also intended that, in addition to reading the text of 
an author, the boys should read translations in order that 
in this way they might, more easily than by running com- 
mentary, appreciate in the ensemlle the full beauty of the 
masterpieces of antiquity. The leading principle of this new 
plan was roughly as follows : " We learn living languages 
to speak them, dead languages to read them." The final 
result, however, was that modern languages were not spoken 
so well as before, and the classics were read less. This was 



LITERATURE AND 7ESTIIETICS. 227 

because tlic authors of the rcfonn started from a principle 
wliich I have shown to be false. The object of education 
IS not to make boys learn the modern languages for the 
purpose of speaking— which is, moreover, quite impossible 
in a school of from three to four hundred boys— nor is it to 
enable them to read the classics fluently at sight, which is 
equally impossible. I repeat that its object is the cultivation 
of intellectual power, with a view to the nation and the race ; 
languages are only the means ; modern languages as means 
are inferior, and lack unity ; the dead languages are good 
means, if they are studied as literature. 

It was supposed that the German m^ethods were shorter, 
but this is by no means the case ; on the contrary, they 
require much more time. When the time devoted to Latin 
is reduced in France to sis years and the time for Greek 
to four, it is forgotten that in Germany nine years are 
devoted to the former and seven to the latter. What has 
been imitated, as M. Breal says (although he was one of the 
chief promoters of the change), is not Germany, but Befgium, 
and " all other countries where a classical training is out of 
repute and powerless." 

The fault of the German methods, which, however, M. 
Breal considers a merit, is that they are too philological and 
too prone to consider Greek and Latin as being of value in 
themselves.* 

In all attempts at reform in France the leaders of the 
movement were philologists and historians, but little favour- 
able to philosophy, with their eyes turned towards Germany, 
where it^ seems at first sight that Latin and Greek are 
only studied for themselves, and are objects of knowledge 
analogous to those afforded by individual sciences. They 
criticised coldly and bitterly the literary exercises we held 
dear, particularly exercises, speeches, Latin verses. The 
French, it is true, practised the argute loqui when they were 
as yet but Gauls ; but this was lost sight of, and to Latin 

♦ Vide an excellent article by M. Potel, in the Eevue des etudes gncqnc& 



228 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

speeches were 'attributed the faults of the French race, instead 
of attributing to the faults of our race those of our Latin 
speeches. The old literary criticism was discovered to be out of 
date, and for it were substituted, thanks to M. Breal, philology 
and history. Children of twelve and thirteen were taught 
all about the transformation of the tonic accent in words of 
popular origin ; they were taught the history of words taken 
from the Latin by savants, or the history of " doublets." 
Who knows anything about " doublets " but philologists ? 
and who need know them ? Boys of fourteen and sixteen 
are taught the earliest periods of literature, and they have 
to learn in outline its origin and the faint outlines of its 
early history. Under the pretext of avoiding dogmatism in 
the literature classes, boys' heads are stuffed with names of 
authors and their works, as if they were to be living 
catalogues, from Pierre Leroy, Gillet, Chretien Pilhon, to 
Eaquin, Du Bellay, Baif, Jodelle, etc. Erudition, historical, 
literary, and philological, has invaded everything, and all 
is reduced to mere exercise of the memory. Progress is 
measm-ed by the number of facts read and learned by heart. 
This is a false intellectualism, or rather, the futile cultiva- 
tion of knowledge which is only knowledge. This pseudo- 
erudition is the ruin of Uterary instruction ; it is supposed 
that children ought to Imoiv everything, while the important 
thing for them is to be able to think and create. They are 
required to learn fact after fact and language after language, 
instead of being exercised in the production of something, 
however small it may be. 

II. I feel that the system of grammatical training and 
the study of the humanities is the true one, but only if both 
are properly conceived and taught. Let us begin with 
grammatical training. 

As far as what is in a measure the technical study of 
languages, it should surely be possible to simplify methods 
and at the same time to make them more attractive if 
masters only would take the trouble to try to simplify instead 



LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS. 229 

of giving way to the desire for complication. This would 
not bo complicating grammar, but simplifying it and making 
it of more living interest by connecting its laws with those 
of the human mind. If a master introduces the history of 
words when of peculiar interest, and thus makes their history 
serve as a memoria tecJinica, well and good ; but there should 
be an end to the profound treatment of philology in schools. 
Historical erudition and philology are the two great enemies 
of secondary instruction ; so far from making the ideas 
more orderly, they only add to the general confusion. 
From the philosophical point of view, grammar has a moral 
influence of its own, and if the master only succeeded in 
making this clear to his boys, they would listen to him with 
more attention than at present. It has been truly said that 
precision and propriety of terms are in the commerce of 
ideas what integrity is in the commerce of things ; that 
there is no complete freedom without a clear mind and 
exact language. Grammar has even a national and patriotic 
side ; in every detail of the structure of a word, and in the 
peculiarities of the orthography which is now being attacked,* 
grammar, instead of confining its efforts to simplification, 
shows us the vestiges of certain fashions our ancestors had 
of speaking, pronunciation, and writing ; and as it makes 
every word, as it were, a revelation from the venerable past, 
it makes these words sacred to us. " It teaches us to 
scrupulously respect the sense which is confirmed by use, 
and which is, as it were, the soul of the word ; it makes 
a language that is pure and faithfal to etymology and 
tradition appear as homage to the national genius ; and we 
see that it is perhaps an act of filial piety to accommodate our 
thoughts, although the substance may be new, to forms with 
which the vigorous and healthy thought of our ancestors 
was content." Thus writes a philosopher,! and a little of this 
philosophical elevation would do the teaching of grammar 
no harm. A literary language should be a perpetual sugges- 

♦ M, Boissier. Vide Journal of Education^ July, 1891. 
t M. Bur Jean. 



230 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

tion. Every word on the sense of which the child is com- 
pelled to reflect, every combination of words, every phrase 
of which he has to analyse the structure, should awaken in 
him ideas and sentiments. The positive mind prefers facts, 
and looks with comparative contempt on words ; but, even 
if some words are empty, the majority are the summary of 
innumerable facts — ^not only natural, but social facts ; a 
word is a product of human society added to nature. 

And, in particular, the study of the poets will be found to 
have an evocative virtue, and there is good reason for giving 
the first rank, as it should be given in the education of our 
youth, to the poets. Even grammar would be more interest- 
ing if it were made more literary and more poetical. The 
very examples may be borrowed from beautiful verses or 
phrases from the best writers ; they may thus represent real 
works of art, and the child will very soon acquire a sense of 
style, i.e. of beauty of form. He will read these verses again 
and again, and each will be associated in his mind with some 
rule of language. He will see why a certain phrase from 
*' Bossuet " or " Pascal " is considered fine, and that even 
the correctness of this phrase, its grammatical logic, and its 
conformity with the genius of the language, are the basis 
of this hterary beauty. The study of a language should not 
be considered as a barren study of words for the words them- 
selves ; it should even at this stage have an esthetic value. 
All words are, at bottom, metaphors, figures obliterated by 
long usage, and misunderstood from the habit of using them. 
And further, the associations of words are really myths in 
which personifications of ideas are brought into action and 
mutual relation ; a phrase is a symbolic history ; the most 
f amiUar expressions enshrine a mythology which is gradually 
disappearing, as would at once be seen if we put capital 
letters to even the most trivial words : " Terror strihes me ; 
the Sea leats on the rocks ; the Wind Uoius furiously ; the 
Storm threatens us ; the Sun hides himself behind the clouds." 
Language is " fossil poetry," petrified mythology.* 

* Emerson, "The Poet" (Tr.). 



LITERATUKE AND ESTHETICS. 231 

Finally, grammar has its logic, as the teacher must show 
his pupils. The naturalist school in pedagogy— which dates 
from Rousseau and Pestalozzi, and with which Bain and 
Spencer have many points in common — has a peculiar dislike 
to logical abstractions. This school v/ill hear of little else 
but the intuitive method, teaching by sight ; to it everything 
reduces to seeing and inferring. Hence its profound con- 
tempt for the study of languages and grammar, especially 
for such grammar as is learned by " rules and principles," 
such as Latin and Greek grammar, instead of " by use," as 
tliey naively fancy they can teach the modern languages to 
the young— learned with the bandage of unconsciousness 
over the eyes. This pseudo-naturalism is based upon a false 
analogy : acquired knowledge is not spontaneous and is not 
the effect of a " necessity of existence ; " properly speaking 
it is not a " natural fact," but an artistic and logical fact. 
We have seen that an ancient or even a modern language 
cannot be learned as we learn the mother tongue. If too 
much reasoned-out grammar is harmful, a moderate use of 
it is far more adapted than even mathematics to develop the 
reasoning powers, reflection, and perception of the mutual 
relations of ideas. 

" To make out the meaning of a scientific proposition," 
says Mr. Bain, " to find the rule that fits a given case, we 
must try and try again ; we reject one supposition after 
another as not consistent with some of the conditions of the 
problem, and remain in patient thought until others come 
to mind." * Such is the intellectual gymnastics Mr. Bain 
offers us instead of the gymnastic of languages. How is it 
that Mr. Bain does not see that in describing exclusively 
the scientific method, he is at the same moment describing 
exercises in grammar and composition ? Do we not in the 
latter case find the rule or principle applying to a particular 
case, try and try again, " reject one supposition after another 
as not consistent with some of the conditions of the 

* Baia, "Education as a Science," p. 370 (Jr.). 



232 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

problem, and remain in patient thought until others come to 
mind"? The child is even obliged to employ all these 
processes in the simplest exercises in grammar or in the 
logical analyses of phrases. As for more difficult exercises, 
they may all be reduced either to the understanding or the 
expression of thoughts ; now, to understand, and especially 
to express, we must reduce the ideas to their elements and 
then note the interconnection of the elements; and these 
are par excellence the two intellectual operations — analysis 
and synthesis. 

The whole of scientific and literary invention reduces to 
these operations, the one much more special, and the other 
much more general and therefore more adapted to the 
training of youth.* Let me therefore repeat that exercises 
in languages are a much more certain criterion of intel- 
lectual vigour than the solution of problems in algebra or 
geometry. Generally speaking, if we want to make a savant, 
we must begin by making an intelligent man, and for the 
development of the intelhgence there is nothing equal to the 
study of languages, especially of ancient languages. 

III. If we proceed from grammar to literature, we see it 
is necessary to reform the general spirit. To give to literary 
training a really sesthetic value, we should make a more 
deliberate and careful choice of our models, confining 
ourselves to the finest passages which, as M. Kavaisson says, 
teach us more in a short time than others would do in a 
longer time. Let us take the masterpieces in the most 

* The scientific operations described by Bain are either the methods of 
discovery (which is not usual among boys), or those of mathematical 
problems, which are only of use in mathematical and physical science; 
and in addition to this they form an individual habit which, as we have 
seen, tends to become mechanical in most boys. Those who solve a problem 
are not always the most remarkable pupils; chance plays an important 
part in the solution of problems, because you may attack the problems 
the right way at the first trial ; and we must also take account of the 
automatic mechanism of algebra, which is a kind of mill for grinding out 
equations. 



LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS. 233 

important styles or carefully selected fragments which are 
in themselves masterpieces. Everything that is mediocre 
should be avoided ; nothing should be retained but what 
can excite admiration; as soon as the pupil ceases to admire, 
his masters lose their hold on him. The teacher, on the 
other hand, should always show by analysis and criticism 
the beauties of the passages selected for study. Instruction, 
in a word, must always be esthetic and never mechanical. 
Banish rigorously all mere effort of memory, and all the 
literary and historical erudition w^hich we have been un- 
fortunate enough to envy in the Germans. It is supposed 
that everything that can be done is done when many true 
and many useful things have been taught — that is the 
schoolmaster's ideal. But it is the beautiful that should be 
taught in preference to all else.* It follows that in classical 
education, as well as in poetry, all styles are good as long as 
they are not tedious ; not because we have to " amuse," but 
because we should " interest " the pupils, and saturate their 
minds with the sense of the beautiful. Whatever is really 
tedious in literature and in history is really far more so (and 
therefore out of place) in education, for it is only lifeless 
abstraction or erudition. It is far better to choose what 
should never be forgotten. 

In our days the " centre of gravity " of a literary training 
is generally placed in explanations of authors, and it is 
supposed that the master's remarks, with the spontaneous 
reflection of the boys, will be enough to develop in them the 
literary sense. But I think that translations and running 
commentaries, which are so strongly urged by the would-be 
imitators of Germany, are but auxiliary means. The boy's 
own translation of a passage from " Homer " or " Virgil," if 
it has been conscientiously, slowly, and carefully made, is 
of far more value in his intellectual development than a 
running translation by the master of a whole book of 
" Homer " or " Yirgil." It is of small value for a boy to 

* vide Book I. 



234 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

be able to give a summary of the " Iliad " or the " ^neid " 
as he would of " Telemachus " or " Gil Bias." Whatever 
M. Breal may say (who supposes that we learn Latin to 
become Latinists), I prefer a good Latin or Greek exercise 
to a running translation — or still better even a few Latin 
verses of average ability, written by the boy himself, for 
they will have much more influence on his education than 
even the verses of Yirgil. 

According to M. Lachelier, the fundamental exercise 
should be the explanation of the Latin text, not a running 
translation, it is true, but a sound translation of it by the 
master, coupled with a running commentary. " It is a 
question," he says, " of learning grammar to be able to read 
Tacitus and Yirgil, of reading Yirgil to learn a love of the 
country, and Tacitus to understand the motives of Thraseas 
and Helvetius Prisons." If this lofty eloquence did not 
disarm objection, we might suggest that reading Yirgil is a 
rather roundabout way of getting to love the country, and 
that to grasp the motives of Thraseas it is not necessary to 
read the history of this great man in the Latin text of 
Tacitus. Besides, after thus maintaining that languages 
must be learned so as "to gain the enormous number of 
moral notions of infinite shades and variety expressed by 
these languages," we must confess that the knowledge of a 
multitude of words is not necessarily the possession of a 
multitude of thoughts. After saying that we cannot read 
the great writers of antiquity or of modern times without 
learning an enormous number of facts, "about aU that 
mankind has done, thought, or felt, in the principal periods 
of history," we are still compelled to recognize that in 
reality pupils read very little of the texts at which they work 
hard to acquire the key. The French authors themselves, 
as M. Eabier bears witness, are perhaps even less practical 
than Greek and Latin authors. " In fact, if we count up 
all the pages, Greek, Latin, and French, which have been 
read and explained in a whole course of study, we could 
hardly make up a volume as thick as one's finger." And 



LITERATUr.E AND ESTHETICS. 235 

even when more is read, the notions acquired would always 
remain fragmentary, detached one from the other, and, so 
to speak, anecdotic, because in this labyrinth the guiding 
thread is missing. History is not enough to furnish this 
thread, for as it is taught at present it is a mere series of 
facts. Instruction in literature must therefore be, not an 
historical inventory, nor idle philological curiosities, but a 
literary and artistic doctrine ; it should be aesthetics at 
once felt, reasoned out, and applied. How can the yomig 
be interested in the works of the great writers, even when 
replaced in their historical environment, if they lack the 
guiding ideas — and, if I may say so, the principles — either 
aesthetic, moral, or social, which give life to every reading, 
and give it an end and a significance ? Now, everything 
tljat resembles any doctrine whatever, I do not say dogmatic, 
but free, open, and even conjectural, has been banished from 
om' system of instruction. But this doctrine would, I feel, 
be the real and only " centre of gravity ; " to have ideas, 
a literary opinion, a moral and social creed, a general 
view of Nature and her mighty laws, and then to co- 
ordinate by means of all the other ideas, the facts of 
science, history, and art ; to simultaneously introduce 
order into and give direction to the explanation of authors ; 
finally and chiefly to be exercised in the expression of ideas 
and sentim.ents, in the composition of small but tasteful 
or logical essays, in the putting of thoughts into action and 
form under the constant control of the classical models; 
that would be the daily round in secondary instruction 
where now not only languages are dead, but also ideas and 
sentiments. 

In my opinion we must also revert to the active methods 
which form an applied aesthetics, for passive methods are 
but mere storing up in the memory. You cannot learn to 
think, to compose, and to ^mte, by a mere scampering 
through literature. Put a pen in the hand of the youth as 
you place a brush in the hand of the future painter, and 
see what he will do for himself. He may write a bad 



236 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

speech or poor verses ; what does it matter ? the speech or 
the verses have been more useful to him than even those 
of Cicero or Horace, because they have exercised his mind. 
You might read "in Oatilinam," or the "Ars Poetica" 
ton times over, and yet have made far less progress than if 
you had written Latin speeches full of barbarisms, or limping 
Latin verses. If you have occasionally thought of a passable 
argument, or, in verse, of a true image, a correct epithet, or 
a nearly harmonious hemistich, your couplet at which 
linguists and philologists may shrug their shoulders, will 
however mark in you distinct improvement and sesthetic 
progress. And, after all, as you are not to be a Latin 
orator or poet, there is no necessity to pay over-attention to 
solecisms, if you have done your utmost to avoid them. 
We are agreed that the mind is an instrument and not a 
*' museum of antiquities," therefore we must strengthen this 
instrument by exercise. The whole history of French 
literature up to the eighteenth century, upon which our 
boys have to dwell at length, is not equivalent to a single 
story told by the child, without concerning himself about 
the "Fabliaux" of the Middle Ages, or the "Satire 
Menippee " — a story in which he has set to work to give 
sequence and form to his ideas, however humble they may 
be. The lad who can write Latin and French correctly has 
no need to know in detail the origin of our literature ; if he 
himself creates part of the literature of his country, and 
becomes a living link in its classical tradition, he is doing 
far better than he would do if he simply learned its history, 
far better than if he is acquainted with Pierre Leroy, Gillet, 
Chretien, Baif, and Jodelle. 

I confess that I infinitely prefer literary results which are 
at the same time intellectual, to the philological results 
which M. Breal prefers in imitation of the Germans. Do 
not let us substitute erudition for literature and art. Latin 
and Greek must remain the instruments of the national 
mind, instead of being raised to the dignity of " ends in 
themselves," of objects to be known merely for the sake of 



LITERATURE AND ESTHETICS. 237 

knowing tbcm. If classical instruction were only one 
subject more to be acquired, it would soon have to be 
sacrificed for the other subjects of knowledge, which are, 
moreover, constantly increasing in number ; but, as we 
have seen, the truth is that instruction in Latin should 
also be instruction in the mother tongue, i.e. a culture of 
the national spirit and literature by means of the mother 
tongue. 

In America, says Guyau, instead of showing children how 
a steam-engine works, a miniature model is given to the 
child; "he then has to take it to pieces, put it together 
again— in fact, he re-makes the machine. When this is done, 
he knows it well." Now work such as this has a parallel in 
the written translation of literary masterpieces, in the 
*' version " and the exercise, with the simple difference that 
in the former case we are dealing with material things, and 
in the latter with things of the moral order. Translation is 
better than teaching " at sight," because it teaches by action. 
We get very inferior translations, or Latin speeches, or 
Latin verses— those copies which are the despair of the 
masters, and which become an argument for the enemies of 
classical training. Well ; read them without the pedantic 
prejudices Avhich make barbarisms and solecism the capital 
sins par excellence ; condemn faults of language, pay exclu- 
sive attention to the pedagogic and 83sthetic side, and you 
will lind that even an exercise full of bhmders may never- 
theless contain some details which show evidence of intel- 
lectual effort or sometimes even of a certain taste. The 
simple fact that five minutes have been spent on a passage 
of Vii'gil in the endeavour to understand it and translate it, 
implies aesthetic progress. 

*'Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per urabram." 

These seven words bring before the student a picture 
which has to be copied. One writes, " They advanced 
alone in the dark night ; " another, " They went, in the dark, 
in the lonely night ; " another, " They went into the darkness 



238 EDUCATION FROM A NATI05TAL STANDPOINT. 

in the lonely night ; " or — " They went, into the darkness and 
solitude of the night ; " " They went enwrapped with dark- 
ness into the lonely night ; " " They went enshrouded by the 
gloom into the lonely night ; " " They went, enfolded with 
gloom, through the shade into the lonely night ! " Good 
or bad, each is a work of art ; all have had to fix their 
attention on a nocturnal picture of simple beauty and easily 
grasped, on an outline, so to speak, which they have had to 
copy. Even if the rest of the passage were entirely wrong, 
these seven words, if understood and more or less badly 
rendered, will have awakened the sense of the beautiful. 
Now, the sense of the beautiful is what makes a man worthy 
of his name ; everything that may develop that sense is 
therefore more important than this or that definite know- 
ledge of literary, historical, or even of scientific facts. It is 
of more importance to humanity and even to the individual 
to have a craving for the beautiful than to know philosophy 
or the history of the Pharaohs, but the mind that feels a 
craving for the beautiful is on the way to become a beautiful 
mind. 

MM. Frary and Breal, writing of poetry and eloquence, 
call these studies " artificial exercises " in versification and 
rhetoric ; but are these studies entirely artificial if con- 
sidered in themselves ? Each of us has in him the germs 
of poetry and eloquence ; he is to be pitied who has not in 
his time been a poet, even if only swayed by the sense of 
the ideal ; so, too, must we pity the man who has not become 
eloquent under the influence of some ardent and generous 
emotion. Poetry makes us penetrate into the very soul of 
things, and eloquence enables us to act on other minds. No 
father, mother, or lover has ever been unable to find in his 
own heart accents that could reach the heart of the object 
of affection. To develop tliis sense of the ideal and this 
power of persuasion which are natural to man and tradition 
in France, is to understand education not only as the French 
but as all nations have always understood it, for from India, 
Egypt, Greece, and Rome to modern times, there is no 



LITERATURE AND iESTHETICS. 239 

nation which has not made poetry and eloquence the base of 
literary education.* 

The only drawback poetry has ever suffered from is its 
difficulty. But, in my opinion, the young man who has 
never composed a verse, who has not attempted to give to 
thought and sentiment the higher form the ancients called 
divine, has not received a really liberal education ; he will 
never be able to thoroughly appreciate either the beauties of 
the great poets, or the poetic harmony of the great prose- 
wrifcers. Besides, prose, to be kept to its true level, must 
have before it the rivalry of poetry, which, exhibiting a 
loftier ideal, keeps it from descending and becoming flat. 
Sainte-Beuve, irritated by the attacks on Latin verses, wrote, 
" Nothing has done more not only to exercise my taste, but 
to mould my intellect." | 

* Vide M. Maneuvriei'. 

t Verses have been sacrificed on the pretext that the boys genei-ally 
made false quantities, I repeat, take the worst copies; you will find here 
and there a passable and sometimes a happy epithet, which will cover a 
multitude of sins ; for instance, the following heptameter is bad, but it 
shows a poetic conception. Speaking of an Alpine excursion, the boy 
writes, Aerid sat pace sedens immensum contemplatur. Now, although a 
bad line, it is of more value in general culture than having learned the 
preparation of hydrochloric acid, or the names and dates of the battles in 
the reign of Louis the Fat. Another pupil, in a piece full of solecisms, 
compares a glacier to the waves of a motionless sea : Immotum mare stat. 
Another writes of the mountain-peaks gradually emerging from the mist 
at daybreak : Monies e node resurgimt. Another : Ifeque deo propius 
credo, atque hominem obliviscor. Another recalls the immensa sileniia 
mantis ; another does it in two words : mons silet. Boys, good or bad, have 
here made an imaginary ascent; the idlest of them have tried for at least 
five minutes to express some idea or other in poetic form ; and in the 
dead languages a simple line may conjure up a whole picture. What do 
faults in versification matter? In the mother tongue they would be 
intolerable ; when we are speaking our own language we are not allowed 
to profane it, and accuracy is a supreme virtue; but the dead languages 
have the merit of allowing philological sacrilege. 

After giving up Latin verses, the reformers substitute " metre " in 
their place, and give learned lectures on the metre of Plautus ! — again a 
mere imitation of " German science." 

M. Breal regrets that in reading Virgil boys "mentally compose a 



210 EDUCATION FEO]H A NATIONAL STANDPOINT., 

As for Latin speeches, from the philosophical point of 
view, they should be an attempt to express the sentiments 
and words appropriate to persons and situations ; they 
should be at once applied psychology and applied poetry. 
The boy is ridiculed for always making Caesar or Brutus his 
spokesman ; but everything depends on the manner in 
which he makes them speak. Did not Shakespeare, in 
making Brutus and Cassius address each other, compose a 
masterpiece, not only from the point of view of the pleasure 
his work gives us, but because of the light thrown by his 
subtle psychology upon the mind of nations and of mankind ? 
No doubt a school-boy will not do so much, but if he throws 
all his attention into doing something analogous to this, will 
he not thereby enlighten his own mind ? 

It is true that we must be more strict in our choice of 
subjects, and of the methods of treatment. It is especially in 
rhetoric that the philosophical spirit is absolutely necessary. 
Badly conceived and badly taught, speeches become the art 
of substituting words for reasons, of warmly pleading for a 
cause that leaves us cold, of maintaining a cause which one 
does not believe to be true ; of throwing off one's own 
characteristics and wearing a mask ; it is the paradox of 
the comedian realized by the orator as well as by the actor. 
We get accustomed to treat the pros and cons^ not with a 
desire to find the real reasons for and against, which would 
be legitimate enough, but with a desire to deceive others. 
Gods and men, ancients and moderns, kings and tribunes, 
captains and magistrates, are made to speak in an unreal 
and false manner, and boys are forced to write of subjects 
which have never been carefully studied ; it is the renaissance 
of Greek sophistry with all its subtlety, but without the 
analytic spirit and deductive vigour. The two types with 

poetical dictionary for personal use." I see no disadvantage in this; it ia 
even the only way of making pupils see the delicacies of Virgilian 
versification. On the other hand, a mere oral translation will never enable 
the pupil to grasp them. In fact, the Germans translate much moro 
Virgil, and understand it much less. 



LITEKATURE AND iESTUETICS. 241 

which this education of the orator suppUes us, are its living 
personification : the vulgar orator and the vulgar journalist 
who talk on any subject and know none, and who solve any 
question by bursts of eloquence or by epigrams. To prevent 
this unduly formal teaching of rhetoric, we must give the 
mind soimd knowledge of the moral and social order. If, at 
fourteen or fifteen, boys receive a sound training in morals, 
at fifteen to sixteen in [esthetics, literature, and the history of 
art ; if critical and philosophical questions take their place in 
their lessons in history ; and if into their training in science 
general questions of the philosophical and historical orders 
are introduced, how can our boys lack ideas when they take 
up rhetoric ? Cannot their teacher then find for them really 
serious questions to write upon, instead of mere declamations 
and oratorical display ? 

I think that the exercise par excellence is composition in 
the mother tongue on some subject in literature, philosophy, 
or history. We should accustom our boys to attempting 
essays of this kind at their leisure, the subjects being, of 
course, chosen with the approbation of the master. Time 
should be given to write a sound and well-thought-out essay, 
the books best adapted for consultation should be indi- 
cated, and the principal points upon which the authors 
attempt to throw light. The idlest boy would be encouraged 
to work if, after his researches, he succeeded in reducing to 
order a few ideas, and in sending up a composition with 
some part or other of it well done. In this way he would 
really learn how to " study." And, as Stendhal says, study 
gives us a daily meed of happiness ; and if it is given an 
object, for example, " Give a clear idea of the Gunpowder 
Plot," the most insipid book becomes interesting ; and this 
interest increases in time and persists long after " the Gun- 
powder Plot " has been thrown aside.* 

* The Latin essay, sacrificed nowadays with all the rest, has its own 

advantages. When we write in the mother tongue, the work seems too 

natural and spontaneous; we do not sulliciently realize the dillicukies, 

nor du we readily grasp the processes which will solve them. When, on 

18 



242 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

If the teacher of philosophy, or, faiHng him, the teacher 
of literature — after having received a better philosophical 
training — were to speak to the boys of the different theories 
of the beautiful, the sublime, the graceful, the object of art, 
of idealism and realism, of the classicists, romanticists, and 
naturalists ; of poetry, sculpture, painting, architecture, 
music, etc., and that, too, with the aid of prints, photographs, 
or casts, which would be real lessons in things ; with the 
aid also of those other lessons in things afforded by a well- 
selected passage from Yirgil or Tacitus, Eacine or Hugo, 
would boys take no interest ? would they not draw from 
their lessons more pleasure and more profit than by the 
purely historical and philosophical method ? 

We do not want the master to teach his boys the mysteries 
of metonymy, prolepsis, syllepsis, hypotyposis, hypallage, 
hyperbaton, antonomasis, catachresis, synecdoche ; and we 
are right to let these flowers of rhetoric " wither in peace in 
botanical collections." But is a course of hterature, and 
even of very general aesthetics, a study of catachresis or 
antonomasis ? We must not confuse the philosophical with 
the didactic spirit ; philosophy establishes principles and 
formulates laws, either certain or conjectural ; the didactic 
method professes to furnish precepts and receipts ; and 
philosophical views are just as interesting as the precepts of 
rhetoric are dull. But it is unfair to banish all didactic 
method from instruction, because there are rules in writing 
as well as in painting and in sculpture. It is not — solely, 

the other hand, we have to express our thoughts in Latin, we have to 
stop, reflect, make a choice, turn and return every idea and phrase. "To 
learn how to reflect," says M. Boissier, "is the first and most difficult 
science presented to a child. Once it possesses it, it can apply it both to 
Latin and to the mother tongue, and so it finds it can write its own language 
without have learned to do so." That was the case with Descartes, 
Bossuet, La Bruyere, and all the writers of the seventeenth century. But 
as our bovs no longer write in Latin so that they may write better in their 
own tongue, they write their own language worse and worse. Teachers of 
philosophy at tlie secondary schools in Paris complain that they are com- 
pelled to teach everything to boys of sixteen and seventeen. 



LITERATURE AND .ESTHETICS. 243 

at any rate — by reading the history of painting that painters 
arc made. 

I should also like to see boys not confined to literature, 
but introduced to the other arts. Here, again, the woman 
will some day be able to instruct her husband, for the 
syllabus in our girls' schools contains a history of art, 
"mainly practical and accompanied by visits to museums 
and monuments." But the syllabus is far too historical, and 
should be more properly aesthetic ; the girls are here, as else- 
where, swamped by a mass of erudition. What is understood 
by works of art ? Main divisions of the history of art. I. 
Antlqidty. Egyptian and Assyrian art. Greek art. Archaic 
Greek art. The age of Pericles. The age of Alexander. The 
great schools of art in the Greek world after Alexander. 
Etruscan art. Eoman art. How Rome learned Greek art. 
II. Middle Ages. Christian art at Eome. Byzantine art. 
Arabic art in Syria, Spain, and Egypt. Eoman art. Gothic 
art in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, England. Civil archi- 
tecture in the Middle Ages. ..." And why not military archi- 
tecture ? " As a matter of fact, it does figure in the syllabus. 
" Military architecture in the Middle Ages ! " III. The 
Roiais sauce. Its origin. The Eenaissance, principally in 
Italy and France. The different schools. Art in the 
seventeenth century (France, Flanders, Holland, Spain). 
Art in the eighteenth century (France, England). Art in 
the nineteenth century. Why should not the stronger sex 
share in this initiation into the arts ? Perhaps even future 
soldiers might be interested in the "military architecture 
of the Middle Ages." But the elementary study of the 
principles of the different arts and of the most celebrated 
masterpieces by means of prints, photographs, and casts, 
would be worth more than all this history. Finally, 
Avith ]\I. Maneuvrier, I should like to give to classes 
halls of study, and to places of union and recreation an 
agreeable and artistic appearance. In these days Ave can 
reproduce at but small expense the masterpieces of drawing 
and sculpture, either by photographs, or photogravures, or 



214 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

by the aid of magic-lanterns. Art, as is commonly said, has 
been brought within the reach of all. Why not profit by 
this progress to decorate our schools, so that, as M. 
Maneuvrier says, " the very walls may speak and teach " ? 
In this respect primary instruction is ahead of secondary. 
Especially in our lower secondary schools would a good 
instruction by sight be profitable, if joined to the lessons of 
the master and to instruction by action. Did not Plato 
say that youth should be surrounded by only beautiful 
things and beautiful works. This, then, is a legitimate 
application of the laws of suggestion and sympathy. The 
memory of the child becomes pliant without an effort to 
the forms of language Avhich it hears around it, and which 
are, as it were, spoken logic ; so, when children are 
surrounded by everything which awakens the sense of 
beauty, their minds are spontaneously fashioned to sesthetic 
forms. " They become like the object of their contempla- 
tion." 

To sum up, — we only know of one way to organize and 
unify the study of literature, history, and science ; namely, 
to introduce the philosophical spirit therein from beginning 
to end. Philosophy is the study of both man and human 
society which are precisely the great object of literature 
and history. In an age abandoned to the conflict of interests, 
in a society in which the necessities of life are ever in- 
creasing, how can we expect children to follow us through 
Latin, Greek, ancient and modern history, literary history, 
etc., if we do not constantly keep before them the end in 
view, and a noble end, if there is not in a measure some 
morality visible in each lesson, a relation between the good 
of the country and of the individual, an gesthetic interest, an 
attraction for heart and mind alike, and therefore an excita- 
tion and a strengthening of the will ? This would make our 
work education and not merely instruction. If in our schools 
we are on the whole reduced to instructing instead of " ele- 
vating " our youths, it is because moral and social training, 
netdected for the first seven or eight years of school-life, 



LITERATURE AND iESTIIETICS. 245 

arc suddenly introduced at the end when it is too late. If 
a better-conceived instruction combines literature and 
science with a moral, social, civic, and esthetic training, 
literary form will have a substantial basis ; there will be no 
need to ask for ideas, we shall have to reason them out and 
be enthusiastic over them. On the other hand, the study 
of the exact sciences and of natural science will take a lesti 
abstract and more social direction ; it will be humanizecL 



246 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER V. 

INSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY. 

T. In Germany, classical studies do not terminate witli the 
*' Maturitatspriifung " at the end of the course of the 
secondary schools ; this examination is simply a matricula- 
tion examination for the universities, at which it is tradi- 
tional to continue the work begun at school. Thus 
philosophy may be thoroughly studied, for the pupils have 
only learned the elements of this subject in the gymnasiums, 
although there is far more philosophy taught in the German 
than in the French schools. They have even retained the 
name of philosophy as covering science, and their doctors are 
called doctors of philosophy. But in spite of the comple- 
mentary course at the universities, it is much to be regretted 
that a complete course of philosophy is not given in the 
gymnasiums. The only extenuating circumstance is that, 
Germany being very religious, religion assumes the burden 
of metaphysical and moral education. 

If in France we were to defer the philosophical course till 
the pupil enters the Faculties, it would simply mean the 
suppression of the Faculties. We must take the French as 
they are, and not try to bind them to a pseudo-Germanism. 
Our classical training should therefore end for all boys in a 
complete and regular instruction in philosophy. 

At present it is freely admitted that our philosophy is 
undergoing a process of evolution ; and this to class- work 
in philosophy is both a drawback and an advantage. The 
drawback — which would be lessened if our system of instruc- 



INSTRUCTION IN PHIT.OSOrHY. 247 

tion wore more simple and more clemenfcary-is a certain 
confusion, springing from the very wealth of ideas, and also 
ft-om the uncertainties which still exist on many points. 
The advantage is that it presents to the youn^ niind life 
progress, and the fruitful working of ideas. 'The master 
carries into practice iu the presence of his boys that search 
after truth m wh.ch Malebranche saw the most divine 
use of human reason; they observe the working of the 
masters mnid, and therefore exercise their own minds in 
thought. Lesides, says M. Lachelier, it is a great moral 
advan age for boys to feel that the master only tells them 
wha he believes to be true, and that they must only say 
what they themselves feel to be true. " Our classes in 
pnilosophy are, nowadays, above all else-a school of 
sincerity. ' 

M. Maneuvrier asks that two years should be devoted to 
philosophy M. Lachelier says, "I should like two years to 
be set apart for philosophy instead of one, and I should only 
ask for pure philosophy during those years, one-third of the 
tune at present allowed; there would then be time for a 
sound and wide scientific training." 

In Italy, according to the new programmes, boys are 

aught descriptive psychology " in the first year, consisting 
by preference m "the enumeration, classificltion, and 
analysis of fundamental psychical facts, and in the explana- 

lon of their experimental laws." The next year they go o„ 
to formal and traditional logic, confined as far as possible 
to points on which all schools of philosophy are agreed ^nd 
to this IS added the theory of induction and of ^h expS 
mental method of modern research, with appropriate Ixe - 
h oT.r ^PP.''<=^"°"«- The last year is devoted to the 
iSite ^T ,'" ^'^^r^^J' -^^-inly to questions of 

po itic.,, tie sturly ot representative constitutions and 
no ,il,ly that of Italy." To these are added elementary 
notion, of aesthetics, and the history of philosophy. ZZ 
physics are elimmated. ' 



248 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

Should metaphysics or general philosophy be excluded ? 
I reply in the words of M. AngiuUi, an Italian philosopher, 
" Whatever cannot be separated in the progressive unity of 
a science, should not be separated in the progressive unity 
of instruction." To say that secondary instruction should 
only include what is proven, by excluding what has simply 
a hypothetical value, is to deprive it of its greatest educative 
power. If hypotheses were excluded from instruction, we 
should, as Haeckel rightly remarks, be mutilating every 
science. The important thing is to present hypotheses as 
hypotheses, and not as demonstrated theories. Moreover, 
the highest and most disinterested parts of philosophy are 
also the finest. I do not attach as much importance to 
" psycho-physics " and its experiments, or to logic and its 
abstractions, as to the great theories of nature, man, and 
first principles. "We must guard ourselves against taking 
positive certainty as a measure of educative virtue. It is 
precisely because general philosophy is not a positive science 
that it has a greater moral and a3sthetic value. Certainty 
is not of the first importance in mental education ; we live 
and act, as a rule, in the midst of probabilities, and Leibnitz 
was right when he said that appreciation of probabilities 
ranks higher than appreciation of certainties.* Tbe object 
that instruction should keep in view is not the solution of 
every difficulty, but the keeping of our youth, by a method 
which is neither dogmatic nor sceptical, in touch with 
controversies in which they will necessarily take a part 
when they enter into the life of the community. The 
problems of general philosophy are, moreover, intimately 
connected with moral and religious problems; the young 
man cannot leave school without a criterion, without ideas 
to guide him amid the opposing influences at work in 
modern society. Secondary instruction should, therefore, 
sketch in, on the background of science arid literature, a 
doctrine of science and of life, filling in afterwards the 
consideration of the ultimate problems of existence arid con- 

'^ " Xouveaux Essais," iv. ch. xiv. De la probabilite. 



INSTRUCTION IN rillLOSOniY. 249 

duct. The philosophy of first principles alone brings the 
mind face to face with these great problems ; it alone gives, 
on more than one point, the sense of the insoluble, \^•hich is 
more important than many scientific solutions, because it is 
the sense of the sublime. Above what the English call 
*' cosmic emotion " is the philosophical emotion which is the 
basis of the moral and religious sentiment. 

The spirit of the philosophy of first principles in instruc- 
tion should be, and in fact is, in France, conformable to the 
enduring part of the Kantian criticism. Hence it must 
show the limits of knowledge. Upon this all philosophers 
will be agreed ; positivists will have no ground for objecting 
to a system of instruction which gives a legitimate place to 
some of their principles, proving them, however, by analyzing 
the conditions of knowledge — which they themselves do not 
do. The adherents of the various creeds will no longer 
object to our laying down the limits of human knowledge, 
because it is precisely beyond those limits where their faith 
begins. As Spencer says, the mysterious in the old concep- 
tion of the universe is added to the new interpretation. The 
nebular hypothesis throws no light on the origin of difi'used 
matter, and diffused matter must be accounted for as well 
as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is as difficulfc 
to conceive as the genesis of a planet. 

To this critical side of philosophy we need not hesitate 
to add a positive and constructive side ; but what should 
it be ? The essential point, in my opinion, is that it should 
not be materialistic. In fact, we consider that the in- 
adequacy of materialism, as a sufficient and complete ex- 
planation of the universe, is fully demonstrated. None but 
the incompetent can accept the materialistic dogma, and 
believe that brute atoms put together in a certain way, like 
the parts of a machine, eventually form something that 
thinks. Materialism has succeeded in defining neither itself 
nor its first principle — matter. The greatest benefit a philo- 
sopher could confer on it is to put it in logical form ; and 
then we see it can be summed up in two lines : All is 



250 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

matter, but we do not know what matter is ; being = 
matter ; matter = x. 

In G-ermany, England, and France there are no mate- 
riahsts among philosophers worthy of the name and au 
courant with the Kantian criticism ; only among savants 
are they to be found, and the reason is that the savanU do 
not know philosophy. The posifcivists and evolutionists, 
from Comte and Littre to Spencer, have always stoutly 
maintained that they were not spiritualists, and a fortiori 
that they were not materialists. No one can object to a 
critical examination of the materialistic dogma taking a place 
in philosophical instruction, as it has done in our own days. 
This granted, I go further, and ask for a place for 
idealism in the education of our youth. I cannot under- 
stand a real education apart from an ideal, without a certain 
influence attributed to that ideal in the progress of humanity 
Ideahsm will only be a " chimera " when materialism has 
been sufficiently demonstrated ; but all that has been at 
present demonstrated about materialism is its inadequacy. 
No one has, therefore, a right to assert that the ideal con- 
ceived by human thought is in essential and eternal opposi- 
tion to the very basis of reality ; for who knows this basis ? 
whose conceptions are as vast and noble as those supplied 
by " nature's ample bosom " .? 

The general criticism of science and its conditions, the 
detailed criticism of materialism, and hnally, the possibility 
and legitimacy of an idealism reconcilable with our very 
knowledge of nature, are the three fundamental points of 
a system of instruction in conformity with the requirements 
of modern philosophy. The teacher may either confine him- 
self to these three points, or add to them his own personal 
convictions. Whatever they are, if based on these three 
incontestable theses, they will have that degree of elevation 
and sincerity which are necessary in an instruction that is 
to be educative. The philosophy which I propose to 
establish on this basis is nob an " official " philosophy, bub 
rather a scientific philosophy, inasmuch as it summarizes 



INSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY. 251 

the work of all philosophers and savants of our time, what- 
ever their schools may be. If, peradventm-e, there be in 
existence an impenitent materialist, he cannot complain if 
he sees a system criticized when he holds in his possession 
its peremptory demonstration ; when his boys come home 
from school he can unfold his proofs and hand on to them 
the " good news." 

II. For philosophy some people wish to substitute the 
history of philosophy. In the education of youth this 
would be replacing the easiest by the most difficult, the 
clearest by the most obscure, and the useful by the super- 
fluous. There is nothing more arduous to the untrained 
mind that is not ait courant with pure philosophy than the 
history of systems of philosophy : either it does not under- 
stand them, or what it does understand is unfamiliar. The 
connection of systems and the deeper features of doctrines 
are only intehigible to ripened minds. The superficial 
liistory of philosophy is apt to run down philosophy itself. 
All that need be known — but it must be well known — are 
the great systems ; all else is only useful to the eradite. 
A single dogmatic question, thoroughly dissected, does more 
for education than a bird's-eye view of the whole history of 
philosophy. 

III. The course cf philosophy should be obligatory in all 
cases ; for those destined for scientific careers, medicine, the 
higher walks of industry and commerce, and especially for 
those intended for literature, law, and pedagogy. A French 
essay on some philosophical subject should be required from 
all boys when leaving school. 

At present, mathematical students go through a so-called 
course of philosophy — which is a meagre course in logic 
followed by such ethics as are taught in the primary schools. 
The whole would fill a dozen pages, which the boys learn 
by neart, without thoroughly understanding or caring for 
it, and with a view to a viva voce examination of a very 



252 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

simple character. Philosophy is valueless in instruction if 
it is not paramount and complete. There is not one of the 
various questions in the full programme of philosophy for 
boys taking up literature, which is not indispensable to 
future savants : distinction between " psychological and 
physiological facts " (which they confuse later in life) ; 
*' method of psychology" (which they will look down on 
coDipared with mathematical and physical methods) ; " the 
sensibility, intellect, and will " (of the elementary laws of 
which they will be entirely ignorant) ; " man and the 
animal " (between which they will be unable to distinguish); 
*' dogmatism" (into which they will certainly fall in science); 
*' scepticism " (which they will profess with respect to 
philosophy, and perhaps even with respect to ethics); "con- 
ceptions of matter and life " (which are the very objects of 
their studies); "materialism and spuitualism" (between 
which they will presently have to choose). If we suppress 
all these questions, we leave our future savants and doctors 
almost inevitably exposed to materialism or to blind religious 
bigotry. Who are more prejudiced than savants who have 
had no philosophical culture ? They are prejudiced against 
psychology, against the science of ethics, and against 
philosophy as a whole. Accustomed to assertion of positive 
facts, they are negative to all that cannot be demonstrated 
with the certainty of mathematical or physical theory. As 
soon as they set foot in the moral and social world they 
experience the giddiness of w^hich Plato speaks ; their heads 
are turned, their eyes are dazzled, and they talk the more 
nonsense because they have been accustomed to the rectilinear 
reasoning of the positive sciences, the infinite shades of the 
moral would escape them, and, as Plato says, they can only 
"embrace the trees and stones they find on the road." 
Objection is rightly raised to literature apart from philosophy; 
but savants without philosophy are still more dangerous, for 
literature is at any rate not dissevered from moral and 
social life, and even is an introduction to it, while the 
exclusive study of science and its applications warps and 



INSTRUCTION IN PIlILOSOniY, 253 

materializes the mind. With philosophy, on the contrary, 
science is grandeur of thought, and if the charm of literature 
be added, the mind is fortified and embellished. Apart 
from these tln-ee terms of the problem — science, literature, 
and philosophy — education is a mere sketch, or an instruc- 
tion often more dangerous than useful. I therefore refuse, 
in the face of all present or future official programmes, to 
give the name of " classical instruction " to any system of 
study from which these three terms are missing. Witliout 
literary and philosophical culture "you will never make, 
with all your science, anything but Mtes utiles,^'' as Saint- 
Marc Girardin somewhat coarsely put it. Happy are we if 
we do not turn out brutes that will do us mischief ! 

An examination has recently been arranged for our future 
doctors, without any serious study of philosophy and without 
the French essay. Now, those who are going to be doctors 
particularly need complete philosophical culture. The pro- 
fessors of various medical subjects are exclusively wrapped 
up in their special subjects or in preparation for definite 
examinations. But medicine is not a pure science, it is still 
an art, or rather, it is an art that is mainly moral and 
psychological. Psychology is more useful to the doctor 
than botany; he will not have to gather flowers for his 
medicines (and their botanical properties have nothing to 
do with their medical properties). The doctor should act 
as much upon the mind as upon the organs of his patients, 
his moral action is often the cause of three-quarters, if, 
indeed, it is not of all of his success. Apart from mental or 
nervous diseases, we see the role of suggestion, the sovereign 
influence of confidence and hope, of calm and mental power, 
being more and more recognized. In the family the doctor 
sometimes even now, as in the good old days, is the coun- 
sellor and friend. Does any one suppose that the true 
doctor's main duty is feeling the pulse, looking at the tongue, 
scrawling a prescription that he has leai'ned by heart irom 
the pharniacopfjeia, taking up his hat, and returning to his 
carriage (the whole visit lasting a cpiarter of an hour) to 



25 i EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

note in his memorandum-book — visit to Mr. X , 

£1? 

A good philosophical training is necessary to protect the 
doctor against the theoretic materialism to which the 
dissecting-room and lecture-room give him a tendency, and 
against the practical materialism to which the daily exercise 
of his profession exposes him ; the taste for higher things 
will prevent him from regarding as a trade one of the arts 
in which morality plays the greatest part. A doctor is not 
a mere veterinary surgeon for men and women ; he must not 
be a mere vendor of prescriptions. In no profession is it 
easier to abuse either the credulity or the pious feeling 
which compels a family to make any sacrifice for the sake 
of one of its members who is in pain or in danger. The 
rapacity of the doctor is one of the vilest abuses that can be 
made of science, and yet we see daily examples of it around 
us ; who has not, among the majority of devoted doctors, 
come across a jackal qiiaerens quern devoret ? Charlatanism 
invades the pharmacy and puffs itself by shameless advertise- 
ments ; do not let it invade and dishonour medicine itself. 
The diploma of the doctor is a privilege conferred, a moral 
and social guarantee ; and the body that grants the diploma 
may lay down its own conditions. The most essential of all 
conditions is that the applicants should have received the 
complete literary and philosophical education which forms 
the liberal and disinterested mind. 

We may eliminate from the philosophical course for our 
future doctors questions relative to the history of philosophy 
and philosophers, aesthetics, the philosophy of languages, 
historical criticism, the philosophy of history, and applied 
logic. But — the reader may object — even to the futm-e 
doctor these are of more value than a course of botany 
(which is useless to him) or of physiology, which he must 
learn over again, scalpel \vl hand. No doubt; then make 
the specialists, in the instruction that is called higher 
instruction, understand this, for in spite of noble exceptions 
that instruction becomes more and more a preparation for 



INSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY. 255 

technical cxciini nations ; make the specialists understand the 
meaning of digmis, digmis cs intrar^l An ill-conceived 
utilitarianism is rampant ; classical instruction must forsooth 
make some concession to the famous "needs of modern 
societies," especially when the new " French instruction '* 
pompously announces that all these needs are satisfied : the 
need for all of botany, zoology, mineralogy, geology, etc. 
All these are to be learned for the final examination, in 
order, as Guyau says, that the examinee may be at liberty to 
forget. 



256 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER YL 

THE NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY TO THE TEACHER, 

" Like master like boy." I do not dream, with Plato, that 
philosophers should be kings, but am content with the 
more modest wish that they should be educators ; over the 
entrance to the professions should be written : " No 
admittance without philosophy." Pascal's father wished 
his son to be always more than equal to the work set him ; 
and a fortiori the teacher should be in advance of his 
professional duties. If it were said that grammar, for 
instance, to be well taught should be in the hands of a 
philosopher, it would sound like a paradox, and it would be 
true, for to make others understand grammar and to make 
it interesting to them, to make them seize its logic even 
when it seems illogical, one should be a thorough master of it. 
And if it were said that the special sciences— chemistry, for 
example — should bo taught by philosophical minds ; and if 
even it were asserted that the mere entrusting of classes to 
teachers fortified with a stronger philosophical culture by 
the side of their special subject would be enough to reform 
instruction — the paradox would be equally apparent. 

After a boy has been suffering at school from " indiges- 
tion " of mathematics, johysics, etc., he then^ has a further 
three years at the same subjects at the Ecole Normale. 
How can it be certain that he can make mathematics, etc., 
educative ; that he will rise up above details ; that he will 
be so far disinterested as to be able to look beyond his own 
special subjects to the philosophical horizon of tbe different 



THE NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY. 257 

sciences ? AVill the teacher of history, after his studies in 
p-.iloography, epig'raphy, and philology, be above dry facts 
and dates ? will he modestly lay aside his dearly acquired 
erudition ? will he care to take general views, and to make 
of history a subject for accurate, philosophical, moral, and 
civic training ? Will the young grammarian, transferred 
from his essays, verses, translations, etc., to take charge of a 
class of children, know at once how to interest them in the 
beauties of declensions and conjugations, Latin and Greek 
exercises, etc. ? will he be able to manage them ? will he 
without previous study be acquainted with the best intel- 
lectual methods ? will he be able to introduce into his subject 
that philosophical, liistorical, and even poetical spirit which 
is necessary to animate it and make it delightful ? Gram- 
marians too often forget that once grammarians were the 
commentators of the poets, that they used to instil this 
spirit into instruction, and hence they had an educative 
mission. In fact, a training for three years in the higher 
foruis of literature, rhetoric, criticism, and history may 
make good speakers and elegant writers, but will not 
necessarily turn out good teachers of the " humanities " or 
good educators. What ideas will they have in their own 
heads .^ What ideas will they give their pupils ? Will 
they always be warm, enthusiastic, and sympathetic in their 
literary criticisms ? Will they follow the example of all the 
great writers they have to make their pupils love, under- 
stand, and imitate, — and be thinkers ? It is to be feared 
that they may sometimes be devoted exclusively to the 
worship of form, that they may be willingly sceptical with 
regard to ideas, that they may from time to time affect 
a fine indifference to philosophy, i.e. to what is the basis of 
all great literature, whether the psychological study of 
manners and character, or morality and politics, or religion 
and metaphysics, or lastly, artistic and aesthetic criticism. 
The mere man of letters can rarely select what is 
adapted for the education of youth, and what will excite in 
the young, not a spirit of disparagement or conceited 
19 



258 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

criticism, too frequent among us, but a genuine passion for 
the beautiful and the good, ^^o doubt some men are born 
teachers, but we must not count on the exceptions.: The 
rest should learn how to teach and how to elevate the young ; 
and for that purpose the first and most essential condition is 
the inspiring our teachers with the philosophical spirit, and 
thereby interesting them in psychology, ethics, and social 
science. If psychology, logic, and ethics do not throw 
light upon matters of education, what will? Given a man 
to whom the human mind is not a closed book, who is 
familiar with inductive and deductive methods, and with 
the philosophy of science, who, in fact, has studied the 
springs and rules of conduct, will he not be a better educator 
or even a better teacher than the man who has from the 
first been confined to research in his special subject, who has 
no interests beyond it, and whose whole horizon is affected 
by the narrowness of his field of vision ? The mere amount 
of one's knowledge is no guarantee of teaching power ; 
excessive erudition may even have a bad effect on it. What 
is the great art in teaching as well as in writing ? " To know 
where to stop." Now, enthusiasm leads the man whose 
knowledge is wide to tell all he knows ; a noble but an 
unprofitable enthusiasm. If wt are to teach science, literature, 
and history t^ the young, we must place ourselves at a point 
so high that we can feel a kind of detachment from details ; 
a philosopher would certainly be more capable, as a rule, of 
doing this than a mere specialist. 

In Germany, each teacher is required to be proficient in 
two of the three great divisions of instruction. We should 
at least expect our masters to have a sound knowledge of 
psychology, ethics, aesthetics, logic, and cosmology, so that 
they can teach either philosophy or their special subject. 
Having the philosophical spirit, they will, ipso facto, have the 
best part of the pedagogic spirit. They will look at 
questions from a higher point of view, and will see them in 
their real place in the sum of human knowledge. They will 
no longer attach the same importance to details of scientific, 



THE NECESSITY OF PHILOSOPHY. 259 

literary, historical, and geograpliical erudition. As psyclio- 
logists, they will be better acquainted with the faculties tliey 
have to cultivate ; as moralists, they will see the end at 
which they must aim, and will give to their teaching the 
moral and patriotic warmth which is its very essence. As 
cosmologists, they will add the philosophy of nature to the 
knowledge of nature ; the properties of fluorine or bromine, 
the laws of the dilatation of bodies, or of electro-magnetism 
will not hide from their view the great cosmic laws of 
which physical and chemical laws are only a transformation. 

Our future teachers must receive a good classical, and 
especially a good philosophical education. We have seen 
how philosophy, besides being the basis of pedagogy in 
general, is necessary to teachers of science to prevent them 
from specializing and from narrowing down their mental 
field, and thus narrowing down an instruction which should 
be an opening out upon the cosmos. It is to be desired that 
science should be taught to the young by men reproducing 
in themselves a little of that universal spirit displayed by 
the greater savant-^hilo&o^herB — Aristotle, Descartes, Pascal, 
and Leibnitz. The tests at entrance to the normal schools 
are very difficult because of the need of selection ; nothing 
could be better, but a preliminary selection should eliminate 
all candidates who have had no literary training and have 
not been through a sound course of instruction in philosophy. 

We must put an end to the invasion of the profession by 
men who know no Latin and no philosophy. Men whose 
special subjects are history, literature, mathematics, etc., 
should be compelled to study these psychological and meta- 
physical principles which are paramount in their subjects, 
and they should also study the moral and social inferences 
to be drawn from these subjects. This would be a means 
of preventing that excessive specialization which, as I have 
shown, is an intellectual injustice, a mental demoralization. 
To be able to write an essay on a subject in psychology, 
ethics, logic, or the philosophy of science is the least we can 
expect from a future teacher ; it is, so to speak, the minimum 



260 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

in a pedagogic diploma. If the essay in philosopliy is the 
true centre of gravity of the boy's work, it is so a fortiori for 
the masters. In our normal schools, the science students 
should take an additional course in philosophy, social, 
economic, and political science. If philosophy, in our days, 
must be scientific, science, in its turn, had never greater 
need of being philosophical. 



CHAPTER VII. 

EXAMINATIONS AT THE END OF SCHOOL-LIFE. 
ABITURIENTENEXAMEN. 

In former days the baccalaureat, or leaving-examinatioii, 
was reached in the ordinary course of events after a regular 
course of study. In those days the baccalaureat did not 
absorb the whole attention of the student as it does at 
present. Why.? Because the examination was less en- 
cyclopgedic, more distinctly literary, and less pseudo-scientific. 
To this type we must revert and so diminish the play of 
chance and the unexpected. Chance only comes into play 
when the programme is too wide, and then mainly in the 
viva voce. By reducing the programmes to what is absolutely 
necessary in science and history, the authorities would have 
the right to increase the severity of the test in all that is an 
active mental exercise. It is therefore essential that the 
written examination should be as severe in these subjects as 
possible — of course taking into account the age of the 
candidates. 

One criterion may be employed to distinguish between 
the fundamental and the accessory in examinations. Every- 
thing that can be learned from a manual is accessory ; 
everything that cannot is fundamental. History, geography, 
science, biographies of illustrious writers, summaries of 
literary history, can all be learned from little handbooks ad 
usum asinorum. But you cannot learn from a manual how 
to write your own tongue or Latin, or to translate, etc. ; you 
cannot learn the really important parts of philosophy from a 



2G2 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

manual ; the student would soon betray his ignorance. In 
examinations, then, we must make short work of all questions 
to which the answers are already given, packed in a little 
m-18 at Is. 6d. On the other hand, we may be as severe as 
we please on the personal work of the student, on all that 
tests a good or bad intellectual, literary, or philosophical 
instruction. Suppose we wished to test a man's bodily 
strength. Instead of trying him with a dynamometer or 
with lifting heavy weights, he is questioned at length on 
works on gymnastics and made to give a list of processes and 
to write out courses of exercises ; he is asked about the 
contests of the Greeks and Romans, and a hundred other 
equally relevant matters. Is that how a man will become 
strong and give proof of his strength ? But that is never- 
theless how we proceed to develop and test his intellectual 
power ; we make our students learn by heart and quote, and 
we question and question for ever ; and to the student who 
retails or writes out most answers we give the diploma he 
seeks. This is not the way. Translation, essays, composi- 
tion in Latin and the mother tongue, are the real intellectual 
dynamometer. 

We must not expect from the student an infinite number 
of scientific details. By so doing we are requiring our youth 
to learn — but superficially — the very subject they must learn 
over again — and this time thoroughly — as soon as they enter 
the " special " or technical school, or the university. What 
is the use of this hastily acquired and ill-digested knowledge 
which, not requiring real mental power, is of no use in later 
studies ? In the interest of " specializing " would it not be 
better, as in Germany, to require a good culture of the 
faculties and a thorough knowledge of the elements ? Besides, 
is it not more logical to expect from the young, not what 
will be required from them again and what it is definitely 
proposed to teach them, but what will not be again required 
from them ? 

The final examination should preserve the unity of a 
general classical training by requiring from all pupils a 



EXAMINATIONS AT THE END OF SCHOOL-LIFE. 2G3 

fundamental knowlcdgo of Latin, Greek, science, and 
philosophy, in addition to the mother tongue. At the same 
time, it should comprise a further test in either —literature 
and science (for doctors), literature and philosophy, literature 
and mathematics, or economical and industrial science. 



264 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

PHILOSOPHY, AND ITS PLACE IN HIGHER EDUCATION. 

I. Theoretically, higher instruction has a twofold object : 
to sum up the noblest achievements of science and civiliza- 
tion, and to discuss the latest scientific, philosophical, 
historical, and literary problems. Higher instruction must 
not therefore merely consist in the exhibition of known 
truths ; it must comprise discussion, criticism, and research. 
The young man must take his part in the work of science 
and must " co-operate in the progress of civilization." 

Unfortunately, improvement meets with an obstacle in the 
ever-increasing " speciahzing " to which our higher instruc- 
tion is tending. A young man, for example, devotes himself 
to history or law, and takes no further interest in the 
progress of natural science, anthropology, or philosophy, 
although it is upon them that history and law are based. 
Similarly, the medical student neglects the moral and social 
sciences, although these are intimately connected in many 
ways with medicine. The great antinomy of the universities 
is that, while they ought to be the centres of pure specu- 
lation, they betray a fatal tendency to becoming merely 
technical schools. 

The wonderful and partly mythical accounts we read of 
the German universities exercise a kind of fascination on a 
certain order of mind. The number of masters and courses, 
the number of students, and the activity everywhere manifest, 
excite astonishment when compared with the state of things 
in France. But, in the first place, the phenomenon is not so 
extraordinary as it seems ; it is simply due to the absence in 
Germany of schools like our great normal and polytechnic 



PHILOSOPHY, ITS PLACE IN HIGHER EDUCATION. 2C5 

schools, to the blending of the faculties of law and medicine 
with the faculties of literature and science, and finally to the 
fact that the universities supply the country with Protestant 
pastors, and that importance is attached to the theological 
faculty by the German clergy. If we were to realize the 
dreams that are haunting some of our reformers, and were 
to suppress with a dash of the pen all our great schools, 
and to combine all the faculties — theology included — into 
universities ; if we were to allow every doctor in letters, 
science, law, medicine, etc., to give courses of lectures, to 
close those lectures to all not lond fide students, and to 
charge a fee for the course each student takes — all our 
students would be gathered into the great towns, i.e. our future 
engineers, lawyers, doctors, etc., our future teachers, who 
would get no professional training without a preliminary 
university career, and our future priests who, if France were 
Protestant, would only be able to take holy orders after a 
university course. This would be a struggle for life and 
for profession, a universal sauve qid pent. The number of 
students would be tripled or quadrupled as in Germany ; 
and to this must be added the amateurs, the rich young 
fellows, who, at present, go to Paris to " read for the bar," 
or to amuse themselves, or to read science, literature, 
philosophy, or history. As each teacher would have the 
power to gather around him a school or " seminary " for his 
own special subject, we should have schools of this kmd 
scattered broadcast everywhere ; students would flock to the 
most successful teacher, and change their master at will. The 
faculties of science would certainly display activity, because 
they would be turning out engineers, doctors, officers for 
the army, etc. So would the faculty of letters, because it 
would be training our future teachers ; and the faculty of 
theology, because (by hypothesis) it would be training 
priests for the whole of France. The professors at the 
universities would compete in order to attract them to their 
chairs, and also, as a matter of fact, to increase their 
emoluments. The students would organize, fight duels, and 



266 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

keep the streets of Caen, Toulouse, and Nancy alive day and 
night. In fact, it would be very much like Germany 
transported into France. The only question that remains 
is — Would this activity be as beneficial to science as is sup- 
posed by those who base their hopes on the restoration of 
the universities, and even on the suppression of the special 
schools ? We should see our professors become " coaches " 
for examinations, and students would spend their four years, 
some doing nothing — as is the case with most students in 
law and medicine — and the rest working for their diplomas 
at special and " paying " subjects. 

This cannot fail to happen in Germany, and is what is 
actually happening in that country. According to Deputy 
Lasker and an anonymous writer (who is known to be an 
eminent professor), the old obligatory courses, and in par- 
ticular those on philosophy, having been suppressed, 
" students are attached to the directly practical courses they 
need." To all else they are profoundly indifferent. The 
universities are so only in name ; they are merely collections 
of "special schools for all tastes and all interests." Dis- 
interested work has given place to realism and utilitarianism. 
This anarchy is making its effects felt in Germany — witness 
the complaints of even the Eector of Berlin University, M. 
Dubois-Reymond — as it has done in Belgium for some time. 
If we dethrone the humanities, our professors in the faculties, 
who, after all, are now free to devote themselves to pure 
science if they have the capacity for so doing, will become 
the servants of the different professions. Certainly each 
university should adapt itself to the practical ends of the liberal 
professions, but its most important task is the completion of 
a high scientific culture. Besides, we must not forget that 
even practical work depends upon the study of theories ; 
general culture should therefore be the basis of special studies. 

II. The best solution of the difficulties raised by the 
organization of higher instruction lies in the sound organiza- 
tion of philosophy and social science. These studies should 



PHILOSOPHY, ITS PLACE IN HIGHER EDUCATION. 2G7 

have the same function in the universities as in the secondary 
schools ; they should synthesize and point out the ulti- 
mate direction of all other studies ; they should ensure the 
harmony of the different sciences and of the different 
faculties, and thus endue the whole organism with life. 
The opposition between the three faculties of philosophy, 
science, and literature, which originally sprang from the 
purely formal character of the last and the scholastic 
character of the first, must cease. Nowadays, as M. 
AngiuUi* remarks, all the subjects of the literary section — 
hngaistics, philology, gesthetics, history — have taken a 
scientific direction, and have as basis the data of natural 
and of mental science. Not only therefore is opposition 
fatal, but separation is equally so. The higher science 
which exhibits the unity, homogeneity, and continuity of the 
laws and methods of all other sciences, the " first " science, 
which lays down the principles, rules, and objects of all 
special subjects, is philosophy. " If philosophy is the basis 
of the sciences," says Zeller, "the faculty of philosophy 
should be the basis of the other faculties. Further, in a 
better organization, the course of philosophy should be 
obligatory to the students in every faculty, and there they 
would find the reason for and the complement of the 
special subjects they are taking up. When division of 
subjects had not reached the extreme which is now so full 
of danger to the progress of culture, it was customary for 
all to take the course in philosophy. Now it is shown that 
philosophy is no longer possible without the special sciences, 
and that they, on the other hand, find their real significance 
and harmony in the unity of philosophy, we feel the need 
of a reversion, in a more explicit form, to the primitive 
harmony." The university, in Zeller's opinion, is more than 
a mere union of different faculties ; its importance lies in 
the philosophical co-operation of their methods and forces.f 

* " La Filosofia e la Scuola." 

t " Vortrage und Abhaadlungen," ii,, 455, 465. Cf. Angiulli, ibid., 
l». 406. 



268 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONCLUSION, 

A HUMOURIST, drawing a picture of society as it will be, 
introduces us to a school of the future. Deep silence ; boys 
motionless on their seats ; what clever boys ! I should 
think so ! they are asleep. A master enters, hypnotizes 
them, and says " Sleep ! " and straightway proceeds with his 
lecture, as learned as you please, and overloaded with minute 
details. *' Eemember all this when you wake ; awake ! " 
The whole class rushes off to its recreation, and, without 
any effort, each brain has registered word for word all that 
was said by the master. This is the ideal of modern 
teachers — the making of the memory a storehouse. Un- 
fortunately, nineteenth-century brains have not as yet 
acquired this marvellous faculty of registering facts under 
hypnotic suggestion. 

Our system of instruction, principally with regard to 
history, geography, and, lastly, foreign languages, is based 
upon a series of psychological blunders, especially with 
reference to the nature of the memory. It is of great 
importance that these blunders should be corrected by a 
knowledge of the most recent psychological investigations, 
so that the existing system of pseudo-instruction may be 
reformed from its very foundations. 

The fundamental error I have shown to consist in a 
misconception of the true means of improving the memory 
and the judgment, or, in a word, of acquiring permanent 
and subsequently useful knowledge. It is now recognized 
by psychologists and physiologists that the memory is c^^'i* 



CONCLUSION. 2(;9 

ditioiial on the occurrence of paths in the brain between 
certain celhiles ; the vibration of celkile a is communicated 
to cellule Z', and by this means of communication one idea 
awakens another and thus association is estabhshed. When 
the nervous path is excited, but not actually formed by a 
nervous current, we have a simple retention of ideas, or 
rather a possibility of recollection ; if the brain-path is 
formed by a current, we have an effective recollection of 
ideas. This being so, what are the conditions of a good 
memory ? Since the memory is altogether conditioned on 
brain-paths, its excellence in a given individual will depend 
partly on the number and partly on the persistence of these 
paths. The persistence of the paths, which is the cause of 
the tenacity of the memory, is a physiological property of 
the cerebral tissue, whilst the number of the paths, which 
constitutes the wealth stored up in the memory, is entirely 
due to the facts within the mental experience of the indi- 
vidual. Xow, as far as the tenacity of the memory is 
concerned, it is a native quality, varying with the age (a 
maximum in childhood and a minimum in youth) and 
with the state of the health, but upon which exercise has 
either very little effect, or immediately exhausts its possible 
effect. If you want your memory to be tenacious, you only 
have to take care of your health and avoid fatiguing the 
brain ; these are the sole means at your disposal. The 
contrary opinion is widespread, especially among parents and 
teachers. A¥e are constantly hearing that we must " develop 
the memory," by, for instance, making the child learn many 
lessons by heart. Mr. W. James has shown by reasoning 
and by experiment how false this prejudice is. We can 
trace many or few lines more or less deeply in the sand, but 
that in no degree changes the degree of natural tenacity of 
the sand ; similarly we cannot notably increase the degree 
of tenacity of the cerebral tissue. The following is one of 
Mr. James's experiments.* During eight successive days 

* '* Psychology," vol. i. p. 6G7, et seq. 



270 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

he learned 158 lines of Yictor lingo's " Satyre." The total 
nnmber of minutes required for this was 131-f. He then, 
working for twenty odd minutes daily, learned the entire 
first book of "Paradise Lost," occupying 38 days in the 
process. After this training he went back to Victor Hugo's 
poem, and found that 158 additional lines took him 151^ 
minutes, z.e. 20 minutes longer than the previous 158. This, 
then, is the effect of many lessons learned by heart to 
" exercise the memory " I The experiment was continued 
by Dr. W. H. Burnham, Mr. E. S. Drown, Mr. C. H. 
Baldwin, Mr. E. A. Pease, etc. The result was that they 
learned by heart no more rapidly after eight days' training 
than before. On learning a series of nonsense-syllables, 
the average time of the second series was considerably 
shorter than the first. This seems to show the effects of 
rapid habituation to the nonsense-verses. There are even 
curious oscillations from series to series, which seems to 
prove that the attention itself oscillates.* As for forgetting 
again, it was almost immediate. Mr. James consulted 
several experienced actors on this point, and all denied that 
" the practice of learning parts has made any such difference 
as is alleged. What it has done for them is to improve 
their power of studying a part systematically. Their mind 
is now full of precedents in the way of intonation, emphasis, 
gesticulation; the new words awaken distinct suggestions 
and decisions ; * the new ideas ' are caught up, in fact, into 
a pre-existing network, and thereby are recollected easier, 
although the mere native tenacity is not a wliit improved, 
and is usually, in fact, impaired by age. It is a case of 
better remembering by better thinking." 

Mr. James also consulted a clergyman who had mar- 
vellously improved his power by learning sermons by heart. 
This gentleman replied, " Memory seems to me the most 
physical of intellectual powers. Bodily ease and freshness 
have much to do with it. Then there is a great difference 

* Vide Ebbinghaus, " Ueber das Gedachtniss, experimentelle Unter- 
suchungen " (1885). 



CONCLUSION. 271 

of facility in method. I used to commit sentence by sen- 
tence. Now I take the idea of the whole, then its leading 
divisions, then its subdivisions, then its sentences." It is 
clear, moreover, that numerous connecting links are estab- 
lished by habit between each sermon and its predecessors ; 
at bottom, the same ideas, the same processes of division, 
development, and style, are to be found in each. It is not 
surprising that, after a training extending over several years, 
a sermon should be more rapidly learned, that the intellect 
should acquire dexterity in finding its way amid the usual 
arguments and texts; but it always remains doubtful if 
the cerebral capacity of retention, as such, has suffered any 
profound modification. 

Training can perfect meiliods of study, association of ideas, 
attention, and judgment, but it cannot modify the organic 
memory with which the young are naturally gifted. Hence, 
if the educator pays attention only to the memory, he is 
losing time ; the only possible method of action is by 
attending to the association of ideas. He may interest, 
exercise, and perfect the attention, he may increase the 
number of cerebral paths, and finally, he may increase the 
number of functional connections between the different 
cerebral paths, and systematize the ideas in the intellect ; 
thus only can he facilitate and make more certain the 
recollection of one idea by means of another. 

The condemnation of "cramming" for examinations is 
a consequence of the best-established laws of memory 
and forgetfulness. What is learned in a short time for 
a single occasion and for a single purpose, cannot have 
formed in the mind many associations with other ideas ; 
the number of cerebral paths which terminate in this 
hasty and recently acquired knowledge is very small ; they 
remain isolated from the mass, and are ready to disappear 
into an inevitable oblivion. A month after the examination, 
almost nothing is left. The memory, properly so called, has 
even less vigour than before ; the brain will be fatigued, 
the intellect will have developed but little, because the ideas 



272 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

are confused and disordered. " Cramming " is therefore as 
futile as the sieve of the Danaids.* On the contrary, says 
Mr. James, "the same materials taken in gradually, day 
after day, recurring in different contexts, considered in 
various relations, associated with other external incidents, 
and repeatedly reflected on, grow into such a system, form 
such connections with the rest of the mind's fabric, lie open 
to so many paths of approach, that they remain permanent 
possessions. This is the intellectual reason why habits of 
continuous application should be enforced in educational 
establishments. The great memory for facts which a 
Darwin and a Spencer reveal in their books is not incom- 
patible with the possession on their part of a brain with 
only a middling degree of physiological retentiveness. Let 
a man set himself early in life to the task of verifying such 
a theory as that of evohition, and facts will soon cluster and 
cling to him like grapes to their stem. Their relations to 
the theory will hold them fast ; and the more of these the 
mind is able to discern, the greater the erudition will 
become. Meanwhile the theorist may have httle, if any, 
desultory memory. Unutilizable facts may be unnoted by 
him, and forgotten as soon as heard. An ignorance almost 
as encyclopasdic as his erudition may coexist with the latter, 
and hide, as it were; in the meshes of its web. ... In a 
system, every fact is connected with every other by some 
thought-relation. The consequence is that every fact is 
retained by the combined suggestive power of all the other 
facts in the system, and f orgetfulness is well-nigh impossible." 
Hence, from whatever point of view we set out, we arrive 
at the conclusion that instruction is not an affair of memory, 
but of intellectual systematization ; it is not the quantity 
read, heard, or written, 'that can either perfect the memory 
or increase our knowledge ; this can only be done by (1) the 
order established between our ideas; (2) our - interest in 
those ideas. The more numerous and the better arranged 

* Vide Guyau, " EJucation and Heredity," p. 136. 



CONCLUSION. 273 

are the facts associated in your mind with this or that idea, 
the more rii,^ht you have to say that you know that fact, 
and that you will be able to make use of it afterwards. 
There are numerous avenues openins^ on the fact which you 
nriy foUoAV in case of need ; it will become as it were the 
centre of a number of lines of railway, a capital or important 
town on the map of your brain. 

We see, then, that our system of instruction is opposing 
its own ends ; it goes on multiplying the number of subjects, 
and so makes them cease to serve their purpose. And as 
cerebral capacity is limited, one part of the brain is only 
filled at the expense of the rest. Each teacher retails all he 
knows, and the more he retails the less his pupils will know 
about it. He must always, on the contrary, say to himself 
at the beginning of a lesson : I am going to teach a number 
of things which for the most part will be utterly forgotten 
in a week, or a month, or a year ; what must I throw into 
relief, and save from the general wreck ? And further, 
assuming that the letter of my teaching is entirely forgotten, 
what is the spirit that should survive, what is the moral 
and intellectual perfection that will result from what I have 
said, even when the memory no longer retains a single 
word of my lesson ? 

The worst feature in the modern mind, which, more- 
over, the system of instruction by the passive storing up 
of facts accentuates, is dispersion of thought. The objects 
of knowledge have become so numerous that they must, as 
far as ordinary intellects are concerned, remain in a state of 
chaos. Either there is a desire to learn everything, and 
only superficial, inaccurate, and disconnected knowledge is 
acquired, or there is a wish to take up thoroughly a par- 
ticular science and we are at once in the depths of a 
" speciality " whence no horizon is visible. Strengthened on 
one point, the mind is weakened on othere, as is the case 
with disequilibrated organisms in which one part, developed 
at the expense of the rest, becomes entirely abnormal. Are 
we to be superficial or are we to be narrow ? that is the 
20 



274 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

dilemma from which training in science, in history, or even 
in literature if taken alone, cannot escape. 

M. de Laprade has devoted a volume to " L'Education 
Homicide." From a still broader point of view we might 
write a volume on the education that is destructive to the 
race, on Vedmation ethnidde. As Guyau says, in overloading 
the memory our main concern nowadays is to obtain the 
" maximum crop " from each individual — almost as if a 
farmer were to take the most luxurious harvest he could get 
from a field for several consecutive years, without restoring 
to it what it has lost ; the field would be exhausted for a long 
time to come. This is what happens, Guyau adds, to races 
that are overworked, but with this difference, that rest and 
lying fallow will restore to land its original fertility, whereas 
an overworked race must degenerate and eventually dis- 
appear.* It is clear that, in the instruction of our youth, 
we are far too much concerned with visible and imme- 
diate fruits, with all that is attractive or of immediate 
utility ; we do not attempt to husband and store up our 
forces, nor do we concern ourselves with the future fertility 
of the soil with which we have to deal. " The real qualities 
of a race are not wasted because they are not immediately 
brought to the light of day ; on the contrary, they accu- 
mulate, and the treasure of genius is rarely found but in the 
coffers in which the poor have amassed their wealth from 
day to day, instead of spending it in follies." 

The acquisition of knowledge is therefore a far less 
important matter than its organization^ which alone ensures 
persistence and brings it into play. "We know the physio- 
logical law which was observed by Isidore Saint-Hilaire, 
and on which Spencer rightly lays great stress— the inverse 
variation of increase of volume or height with the develop- 
ment of the internal structure. In the chrysalis the volume 
is not increased, and the weight even diminishes, while the 
internal structure is actively developing, the metamorphosis 

* " Education and Heredity," p. x. 



CONCLUSION. 275 

is rapidly taking place, and the wings emerge, ready to 
open. So with the development of knowledge ; acquired 
knowledge, to be of real use, must be organized. An exces- 
sive increase of scientific or literary knowledge will in pro- 
portion diminish the organization — which, however, is far 
tlie most important ; the chrysalis will be unable to unfold 
its wings or even to form them. 

II. The pretext for this intellectual overwork is the 
imperative necessity of considering what is useful ; but even 
from the utilitarian standpoint, what are the essential 
qualities for success in the higher walks of industry or 
commerce, for example ? Is it enough to have acquired a 
certain amount of knowledge ? In the first place, we must 
have, with respect to the intellect, the inventive, imagina- 
tive, and initiative spirit ; with respect to the will, we must 
have energy and the love of work. Now, the spirit of in- 
vention, from which industrial genius and talent, as well as 
scientific genius, must spring, is not acquired by a simple 
process of storage. If a man's memory is loaded with 
results, and if he is incapable of going back to first prin- 
ciples and of methodically reconstructing the whole, he is 
not a savant, and may very well be unintelligent. What 
makes the savant and the business man is reasoning com- 
bined with imagination ; the way to learn a science or an 
industry is to partially reconstruct it one's self, to reinvent it 
by passing over the paths marked out by others so as to 
follow the connection of first principles and final conclusions. 
The man who has mentally constructed a part of the edifice 
of physics, for instance, and who perfectly understands that 
part vrith the interconnection of its laws, is a better 
physicist than the man who know^s by heart all the results of 
physics. It is therefore not so much the mass of acquired 
knowledge that has to be considered, as the mental power 
developed. Literary exercises, as we have seen, are emi- 
nently adapted to the development of imagination, ingenuity, 
and invention. At the same time, they develop the taste — 



276 EDUCATION JFROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

another important element in industrial success. Then 
comes the development of the will, and here again is a law 
misunderstood by our system of forcing, for success in the 
practical application of science, as in all other employment 
of the activity, depends less on the sum total of knowledge 
acquired than upon the energy of the will. In a great 
measure this energy depends upon cerebral vigour ; genera- 
tions overworked by their scientific training and physically 
enfeebled, eventually lose their will-power. The hasty and 
excessive culture of the intellect and memory must therefore 
defeat its own end — utility eliminates the strongest cha- 
racters by selection to the advantage of the weak. So that 
not only does the storing up of scientific facts in the memory 
make neither the true savant nor the great manufacturer, 
but it further tends to rob them of the fund of energy, 
initiative, and enterprise without which success is impossible. 
The more the programmes are overcrowded " with a vieiv to 
industry and commerce," and that at the expense of classics 
and the true humanities, the more the spirit of routine, of 
passivity, and of mechanical imitation is developed, the more 
are the will and intellect enfeebled. Further, the true 
interests of the higher paths of industry and science are but 
ill conceived without a highly intellectual, sesthetic, and 
moral culture. 

III. We have just seen that moral culture tends, by the 
indefinite increase of the number of subjects in the curri- 
culum, to become more and more extensive and less and less 
intensive; this is an evil which must be remedied. The 
greater the variety of the objects of thought, the more in- 
tensive must be the education of the thinking student to 
avoid its becoming superficial and sterilizing. On the other 
hand, if we are limited to one kind of intensive culture, 
having as its aim a special class of determined subjects, we 
shall eventually have a narrow and "specialist" education 
but ill adapted to a social environment which is becoming 
ever wider. How can the antinomy be avoided ? By the 



CONCLUSION. 277 

method which Giiyau proposed, the idea of whieh lie 
borrowed from modern culture of the soil — i.e. the method 
of rotation of crops, which enables our culture to be at ouce 
intensive and varied. After a rigorous elimination of what 
is not essential, we must take the three or four fundamental 
subjects in all systems of secondary education, carry them 
to a higher degree of intensity, and make them succ^-cd each 
other so that in the case of both the mind and the soil 
variety may give the needed rest in an age in which the 
mind can no more He fallow than the soil. This is the only 
way of keeping the race fit for its work without sterilizing 
it by over-pressure. 

I have shown in this volume that the subjects essential to 
an intensive training are — literature, the general theory of 
the sciences, and philosophy. The ideal end of humanity is 
clearly moral and social life carried to its highest degree ; 
the subjects connected with man and society are those of 
which the development and triumph will be seen in the 
future ; in this direction, therefore, must education be 
orientated. Thus, in a measure, we have marked the object 
of all instruction ; moral and social ideas with their 
accompanying sentiments seem to me to be the end of educa- 
tion ; the literary, historical, and philosophical humanities 
on the one hand, and the scientific humanities on the other, 
are the means of attaining this end. But literature, general 
history, and philosophy have a breadth that scientific studies 
do not possess ; they do not bring into play the intellect 
alone ; they affect the sensibility and the will, the heart 
and the character ; they are already penetrated by social 
and moral ideas ; they are therefore much nearer the ulti- 
mate goal than mathematics, physics, and the natural 
sciences. For this reason I have given them a more 
important position than science in a liberal education. I 
have thus come to an entirely different conclusion from that 
which Spencer and Bain have adopted, and which has been 
based upon an inaccurate interpretation of the principles of 
evolution. 



278 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

By tlie side of a really intensive culture on these essential 
points, we must place an extensive instruction on secondary 
points. This extensive part of instruction varies with the 
individual, for each individual cannot learn everything at 
once. If a thousand subjects are necessary to a civilized 
nation in these days, that is no reason why the same persons 
should learn them all. Only, once we admit the principle 
of a diversity of complementary instruction, we must 
determine the age at which these various special subjects — 
each of which is useful to a civilized nation — should be 
acquired. Now, I have shown that it is not at school that 
boys should learn the thousand subjects necessary to modern 
nations ; they are at school to receive a general instruction 
which can only admit of parts that are interchangeable in 
the case of studies of really secondary importance. Here, 
then, we must apply the criterion I have suggested, i.e. the 
distinction between objects of mere instruction., which, 
being variable, admit of equivalents, and the general means 
of lileral education which admit of no equivalents. Thus 
stated, the problem of modern education is no longer as 
insoluble as at first sight it appeared. What is the cause of 
intellectual over-pressure ? whence does overwork arise ? 
In science ; almost only in science and in its growing multi- 
plicity of detail. Now, I have shown that the sciences, with 
their subdivisions and details, are just what are least essential 
to secondary education. They may well introduce what is 
new into human knowledge, but they introduce nothing new 
into education ; I repeat that the third book of Euclid is by 
no means — from the pedagogic point of view — the revelation 
of a new world ; the end of chemistry is of the same value 
as the beginning ; a little more or a little less is of small 
importance from the educational point of view. It is only 
therefore with respect to a boy's profession that such know- 
ledge of scientific details is preferable. Now, even from the 
professional standpoint, it is of pre-eminent importance to 
have a well-traiiied mind and a general scientific aptitude. 
Introduce, therefore, a sound study of the leading branches 



CONCLUSION. 279 

of science, and let each boy afterwards make his choice 
among the o'ber branches. Here the division of labour may 
come into play, for, on the whole, all scientific work is of 
much the same value. 

On the other hand, in the moral, social, and philosophical 
order, there are subjects which I feel are absolutely neces- 
sary to every member of the ruling classes; our schools 
must not send out into the different professions men whose 
minds are without philosophical, moral, and civic culture. 
In this case no equivalents can be admitted. In the first 
place, nothing can replace a stady so original and unique 
of its kind as philosophy. Besides, intellectual over-work 
does not come from this quarter; philosophical science, 
on the contrary, from its co-ordination of knowledge, pre- 
sents us with this wonderful advantage — that it simplifies 
knowledge while it appears to add to it, makes it more 
easily understood, and retains it by systematizing it. In 
the second place, do the classical humanities admit of a 
" real equivalent " ? Should a secondary instruction, based 
upon the study of modern languages, on that of the mother 
tongue, on a wider and more practical study of science — 
should it be called the equal of classical instruction, equal 
in value, and equal in its sanctions ? My answer was in the 
negative. 

1 think, in fact, that it has been placed beyond a doubt 
that the problems of education can be judged neither in the 
abstract nor in individual cases, but that they must be 
looked at from the point of view of general means, great 
national and international interests. I have shown the 
most striking instance of this in the question of " Latin," 
which is at the present moment the subject of such debate. 
From the abstract point of view, Latin and Greek do not 
seem to be absolutely necessary to education ; nor do they 
seem any the more necessary for given individuals, if tliose 
individuals are well-endoAved, and have educators skilful 
enough to replace the dead languages by a good modern 
instruction. But, when it is a question of knowing the 



280 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

best method of elevating and instructing the youth of the 
ruling classes in a given country for several generations, it 
is very clear that the question is altered. We have no 
longer to consider the objects of study in themselves, either 
abstractly or in their action on given individuals ; we must 
consider all the " ins and outs," the general system with 
which each particular subject is connected, all the national 
and international reactions of the method of instruction 
selected, the spirit it tends at first to develop in the young, 
and then in the social class to which they belong ; the tenden- 
cies to which a given type of instruction will respond, and 
the particular or general interests it brings into play. In 
short, it is a problem of such complexity that only a hght 
head and a " light heart " would upset the instruction of a 
nation with a dash of a pen. Every part of public instruc- 
tion holds together; the present basis cannot be changed 
without an infinite series of consequences and effects, some 
fortunate and others the contrary. 

One of the partisans of " classical French training " has 
said, " The State must run no risks in the matter of instruc- 
tion, because its initiative affects the whole community, and 
because it is far more difficult to repair the effects of ill- 
conceived or badly carried out attempts when they affect the 
whole of the social body." Individuals and private institu- 
tions may be as daring as they please, and miay undertake to 
do anything in the matter of education, for their attempts 
never cover more than a partial field of application, and 
have only a limited range of influence.* 

The most zealous of the promoters of the new " French 
classical instruction" have expressed their fears on seeing 
the authorities ready to institute this system throughout the 
country, and thus to provoke a kind of pedagogic revolution. 
" All we ask for," they say, " is a few experiments ; let us 
have a few lyceums, and test our system progressively, 
instead of starting with a talnla rasa^ Wise words, but 

♦ Feineuil, "Les rrincipes de 1789," p. 269. 



CONCLUSION. 281 

a little ingenuous, perhaps. It is an excellent plan to make 
a few experiments instead of upsetting everything ; but 
individual experiments, after all, will prove nothing, or at 
most very little. Here are some of the most distinguished 
university men, who have themselves received the most 
complete classical culture, whose successes at the university 
have been due to the very classical training against which 
they are now protesting ; they have a new and enthusiastic 
faith in the virtues of this modern system — as they conceive 
it; we are to hand over to such men as these a whole 
lyceum, which they will pit against the classical lyceums. 
In other words, it is proposed to make a trial of the so-called 
French and modern instruction, by means of teachers who 
are nurtured in antiquity and the classical humanities, and 
who also are animated by the sincerest patriotism. Under 
such conditions, such a lyceum must be singularly unlucky 
if it does not compare favourably with its rivals. In reality, 
all boys would be trained in the same spirit, and would have 
been subjected to the influences of ancient literature, some 
directly, and others indirectly, but under the same class of 
teachers, prepared for their vocation by the same training. 
No definite conclusion could be drawn from such a plan. 
But generalize the system, subject all the secondary schools 
to the new regime; let the teachers gradually grasp its 
spirit; let families and children be accustomed to see in 
instruction an immediate advantage, an apprenticeship to 
the profession of to-morrov/; and we must ask ourselves — 
will the literary and artistic, the philosophical, the dis- 
interested, and really humane spirit be able to resist this 
growing invasion of instruction by utilitarian prejudices 
and scientific exigencies — and that at a time when the 
religious spirit is becoming weaker ? That is the problem. 
It cannot be solved by discussions on the intrinsic value of 
Latin, Greek, or German, or by isolated experiments in the 
lyceums. Even if the experiment were made on the largest 
scale, the effects would not be felt until later. The same 
teachers, teaching other subjects, will still be saturated with 



282 EDUCATION FKOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

tlie same spirit, and will make bojs members as it were of the 
same family ; but wait a few generations I Are our reformers 
so sure of the effects of their proposals as to venture on 
such an experiment on a vast scale — and that, too, without 
other nations domg the same ? If they are so certain, if 
they imagine that by merely teaching the mother tongue 
and the usual languages they can face the invasion of purely 
scientific and materially useful studies, the barbarism of the 
scientific and of the industrial world which threatens our 
democracies, they cannot be too much admired. Once the 
sources of literature and art are dried up, or reduced to an 
almost imperceptible pool containing barely enough to slake 
the thirst of a few insects, we shall gradually see this utili- 
tarian and scientific drought affecting the ruling classes, we 
shall see a middle class eager to gain, "ever hurrying 
onward," wholly abandoned to the struggle for existence, for 
wealth, and for power, with no criterion of education but 
the eternal " What use is it ? " This will be the reign of 
universal platitude. 

The French are reproached with their formal art, their 
formal literature, their dilettantism, and their lack of sober 
steadiness. I am far from refusing to acknowledge that 
there is something plausible in this reproach ; but we must 
go to the true causes of the evil to find the true remedy. 
Our classical training is blamed ; but in other countries it 
does not produce the same results. It is not therefore the 
fault of Latin or Greek, but, no doubt, it is the fault of the 
French and their ancestors, the Gauls. Again, the methods 
in use in a classical training are blamed. There is more 
truth in this. Our methods certainly are mainly directed 
to the turning out of men of letters, writers and readers of 
delicate taste. But must we renounce these qualities under 
the pretence of correcting our faults ? Every quality has 
its opposite defect. It is dangerous to attempt to stamp 
out entirely the defects of a race, with which in a measure 
its vital force is bound up. Suppress the active methods 
of composition in the mother tongue and in Latm, adopt 



CONCLUSION. 283 

the methods of German erudition, reading texts at sight, 
running commentaries, etc., and we shall not even make our 
bojs " erudite " in the German fashion ; we shall only 
succeed in making them heavy and dull. Similarly, replace 
Latin and Greek by science and modern languages, and we 
lose our men of letters, and our real savants. We do not 
thereby prevent our young French lads from being fickle, 
often superficial, dogmatic, and simplistes. Not only do 
we not obliterate their defects, but by the less refined 
education we exaggerate them, and they lose their corre- 
sponding good qualities. 

I have already pointed out that, from the moral and 
civic point of view, the types of education given to the 
masses, to women, and to the middle classes, are all of the 
same value, have the same social importance, and should be 
on the same level. But from the point of view of litera- 
ture, science, art, and philosophy, the three types of educa- 
tion cannot be identified. Primary instruction or even 
the secondary education of ivomen is one thing, the training 
of merely receptive minds, but secondary instruction for males 
is quite another, for it should train and form productive 
minds, minds with initiative. For this purpose a second- 
hand instruction is no longer sufficient. 

Instead of lowering the level of the classical training, 
and that under the pretence of our being a democracy, it 
should be maintained at a high level in the very interests 
of the democracy. What are the reproaches aimed at a 
democratic regime? The artisan, it is said, recognizes no 
labour but manual labour, and takes bodily effort as a 
measure of the service rendered and the reward earned. 
It is with difficulty that an artisan can be brought to 
recognize the utility of capitalists, of the great industrial 
" contractors," of merchants, " those useless middlemen and 
parasites." How will things be when it is a question of men 
wlio are thinlcers by profession ? — philosophers, artists, men 
of letters, etc., whom M. Frary himself, as we have seen, 
treats as unproductive. Leave the direction of instruction 



284 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

to the democracy and its far too direct representatives, its 
politicians, and realism and utilitariansm must inevitably 
invade it. In one of the best of the American reviews,* 
Mr. Weinschell, speaking of the influence of democracy 
on instruction, tells us that, under the influence of popular 
control, nations that for many years were celebrated for the 
advantages they afforded in the way of instruction, have 
sunk to an amazing degree of inferiority. In one of the 
states of New England the population is increasing, and the 
school attendance is decreasing. Even in the most in- 
telligent parts of the country the towns are incessantly try- 
ing to reduce the cost of the better class of schools by the 
elimination from the curriculum of science and languages, 
so that in a few districts it has actually been proposed to 
suppress all public instruction but that given in the primary 
schools. " We cannot help being struck," says M. Scherer, 
in 1883, " by the coincidence of these facts with the 
repugnance of the municipal council of Paris to favour the 
development of secondary education." f Another reproach 
levelled at democracies is the increasing mediocrity of their 
rulers. " It is in vain to deny," says M. Scherer, " that the 
masses are ignorant and incapable. They have no time for 
education." In fact, besides the tendency to mediocrity 
and the envy of superiority, one of the greatest dangers of 
a democracy is its passion for simple ideas and absolute 
principles. Having no time to reflect or to examine things 
in the complexity of their real details, a democracy is con- 
tent with elementary and general ideas, upon which it bases 
its opinion on all subjects. Now, if the mediocre and 
simple minds are to decide matters of instruction, if, more- 
over, they fashion after their own image and for their own 
use a mediocre and commonplace system of useful languages 
and useful sciences, what will become of the higher culture ? 
The liberal spirit must be maintained in a democracy, and 
we must therefore struggle against political or religious 

* North American Review^ February, 1883. 
+ "La Democratie et la Frauce," p. 110. 



CONCLUSION. 285 

party spirit. If education, as in France, is almost entirely 
popular and primary in its character, the liberal spirit will 
be gradually enfeebled ; reactionary and clerical influences 
on the one hanci, and demagogic and socialistic influences on 
the other, will divide the masses, and each side will be as 
tyrannical in its tendency as the other. But our classical 
schools, on the contrary, are the focus of liberal ideas, and 
are therefore the safety of the democracy, which, without 
them, is handed over to the demagogy or despotic reaction 
■which every demagogy provokes. This principle being laid 
down, if we suppress in our secondary schools what is in a 
measure the sensible criterion of a liberal secondary system, 
and which in the instincts of the masses visibly differentiates 
it from primary higher instruction — I mean Latin, etc. — we 
shall see the municipalities abandon the secondary schools 
(which cost money to support) in favour of higher primary 
instruction (which is supported by the State). It will be in 
vain to speak of classical and literary instruction, for neither 
parents nor their representatives on the local councils will 
see the necessity of purely national literature. They will put 
in their main claim for useful and " professional " science ; 
and if enough science is not given them, they will be 
content with free primary instruction and its transforma- 
tions. The ■ sectarian schools, taking the place of the 
classical schools, will alone profess to keep alight the sacred 
fire. Unfortunately, this will be to the advantage of a 
narrow faith and of a political party. Consequently, the 
so-called democratic instruction will ruin the democracy. 

I think I have shown from reasons not merely pedagogic, 
but national and international, the necessity of maintaining 
the classics as the basis of secondary instruction, especially 
among neo-Latin races. I have been unable to admit the 
force of any of the reasons put forward for destroying the 
unity of secondary instruction, either by bifurcations into 
so-called equivalent types, or by separations, or by succes- 
sive " cycles," permitting students to prematurely abandon 
a complete course of studies. Secondary instruction must 



286 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

not use the finances at its disposal for the purpose of cutting 
itself into sections of an invariably inferior quality. This 
would be gradual disorganization substituted for organiza- 
tion. We must not by a specious paralogism proceed from 
the premiss of the necessary diversity of hierarchic degrees 
of instruction to the necessary diversity of the same degree 
of instr action — secondary and liberal education. 

A " French " education, with the addition of science and 
modern languages, may be useful to a large number ; but if 
we rank an incomplete classical training as equal to a complete 
classical training, the former will favour the utilitarian 
tendency of the middle and lower classes. It will attract 
those who, supposing it easier and shorter, will consider it 
also equal to the latter in dignity and results. The end will 
be the movement of secondary instruction as a whole, not 
towards higher but towards primary instruction. 

ly. The last conclusion to which I have arrived in this 
volume is that if we do not wish secondary instruction to 
become disorganized, if we understand that the continual 
increase of theoretical subjects of knowledge and practical 
necessities threaten us with a genuine intellectual and even 
moral chaos, and that in order to strengthen that instruction, 
we must simplify, and at the same time unify it, it follows 
that its organization must be philosophical, for it can no 
longer be religious. An education which does not combine 
synthesis and analysis has really but one name — dissolution. 
Life makes no progress without a close organization of 
materials borrowed from without, by their reduction to a 
unity of type, aim, and function. 

Without introducing a course of philosophy into every 
class in literature and science, we should, and we can, 
infect each class with the philosophical spirit. The 
elementary teaching of physics and the natural sciences 
should comprise an elementary conception of cosmology, 
which is the simplest form of philosophy. The idea of 
nature and its great laws should spring into being in the 



CONCLUSION, 287 

child's mind ; wo should feel that admiration of the cosmos 
which English philosophers call cosmic emotion. Besides, 
the teaching of history, literature, and m-orals should lead, 
in a very elementary form, to what the Germans call a 
philosophy of the mind ; we must make the child grasp the 
connection of the laws of moral and social progress with 
those of life and nature. He will thus acquire the senti- 
ment of the ends of individual and collective existence, the 
sentiment which is the higher rule of life. In a word, to 
get a rule of condact from science, we must weld an indis- 
soluble link between principles of the moral order and the 
laws of existence. 

Every lesson should therefore commence by showing the 
theoretical and practical grandeur^ the beauty, and the 
philosophical interest of the question under discussion, and 
its moral or social importance. And similarly, every lesson 
should end with general, elevated, and philosophical con- 
clusions. If the development of the different faculties, and 
principally of the imagination and reason, varies with age, it 
must always be as simultaneous and convergent in education 
as in life itself. Condillac has clearly shown that the faculty 
of reasoning "begins when our senses begin to develop." 
Locke, in his turn, advises reasoning with children, "Idg- 
cause they can understand reason as early as they do 
language."* All subjects should therefore be reasoned, 
reduced to first principles, and orientated to an end of 
which the young can see the importance. Thus will they 
be inspired with a love and respect for the science they are 
studying. 

In mathematics, for instance, it is well to make the 
lessons more, attractive, to throw more light upon the 
subject, to clearly mark the connection and relative impor- 
tance of theorems, and not to treat everything on the same 
plane. Teachers in our days still continue to exhibit in 
the abstract a rectilinear series of theorems without dis- 

* "Some Thoughts concerning Education," § 81, p. 125, fifth 
edition (Tr.). 



288 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

tinguishing essentials from accessories ; geometry thus 
becomes a monotonous chain, all its links being of equal 
value. The master, on the contrary, should call the atten- 
tion of the student to the leauti/ of the theorems, and even 
make him admire them, especially those theorems which are 
to geometry what the dominating organs are in physiology. 
And it is well to name the inventors of these beautiful 
theorems if opportunity offers. For instance, that the three 
angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, 
that the homologous sides of equiangular triangles are pro- 
portional, that angles in a semicircle are right angles, are 
certainly beautiful theorems, of infinite fertility, possessing, 
moreover, an aesthetic value from the laws of symmetry, 
constancy, and proportion they reveal, and from the role 
they play in the art of design ; why, then, should they be 
expounded with the same impassible coldness as all the rest, 
as dead abstractions, as uninteresting truths, as like one 
another, as unilinear and monotonous as 8 -f- 3 = 11, 
12 + 4 = 16, 13 + 4 = 17, etc. ? Why not name the 
discoverer of these three theorems, when it is also the name 
of a philosopher whom the boys should know — Thales, the 
Greek ? Is it lost time to interest them historically and 
a3sthetically in these theorems ? Quite the contrary ; time 
would be gained by this apparent digression, for, thanks to 
this intelligent and interesting in&moria technica^ the boys 
would not forget the theorems, and if they did, they still 
would have retained, so to speak, their spirit and educative 
substance. 

Similarly, apropos of such an apparently thankless subject 
as numeration, is time lost by showing the lads the steps by 
which humanity reached the present system ? — if we speak 
of the tribes whose numeration did (or does) not extend 
beyond three, and who, powerless to express higher numbers, 
put their hands to their hair as a sign of infinity ; if we 
show them, in the Sanscrit and Greek forms of the singular 
and plural, the remains of an age in which they counted 
only " one," " two," and " many ; " if we tell them that, 



CONCLUSION. 289 

starfcing from one and two, the word " three " originally 
meant " more than two ; " four, three and one ; five, the 
hand ; ten, twice five, two hands ; if you remember in 
Homer Proteus counting his flocks of walruses by fives (the 
quinary system) ; if you show how numeration advanced 
but a little further among the Greeks, who did not go 
beyond the myriad ; if you add that Archimedes iuvented 
his arenarium to assist himself in speculating on large 
numbers — for instance to compute the number of grains of 
sand in the earth ; that languages and especially modem 
budgets have alone brought into use and made familiar such 
terms as "miUions," etc., that the words "billion," "trillion," 
etc., were invented in the sixteenth century ; that a 
septillion is far beyond human conception, and that if, as 
Mr. Crookes calculates, the figures of which it is composed 
were defiling past us at the rate of one hundred millions a 
second, the passage of this amazing multitude would take 
408,501,731 years, i.e. possibly longer than the solar system 
has existed ; finally, that if a man were to devote his whole 
life to writing out a list of all the numbers, he would barely 
be able to write a million millions ? The teaching of science 
would be really educative, if, as we have shown, it thus 
appealed to the imagination, to the sentiment, and to the 
reason, instead of merely to the memory >and to automatic 
reasoning.* 

Show how numeration hastens the march of thought, first 
by addition, and then by multiplication, an abbreviation of 
a series of additions, and then by raising to powers, which 
abridges a series of multiplications. " Numeration," it has 
been said, " advances step by step, addition by leaps, multi- 
plication by bounds, and powers, as it were by a kind of 
flight." t Perhaps a child learning multipHcation will have 
less desire to yawn if he feels his mind is gaining power, 
and that his thought is finding wings. The history of 
figures is also very interesting ; every figure is like an 

♦ Cf. Book II. 

t M. BourJeau, " Theorie des Sciences." 
21 



290 EDUCATION FROM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

individual with its biography, and not the dead sign which 
children alone see in it. The zero for instance, has its 
"Odyssey ; " the introduction of the negative sign was nothing 
short of a revolution. Why not tell its history to children ? 
No doubt they will forget the details, and of course we 
must not overload their memories ; but an impression will 
remain behind — an impression of interest, even of pleasure ; 
the abstract ideas thus introduced into their minds by 
concrete paths will be engraven upon them and will never 
disappear. In a word, and we cannot repeat this too often 
to science as taught in schools, " Humanize thyself." 

On the other hand, literature and history are mainly 
valuable because of the modicum of social science and of 
the yet ambiguous morality and vague philosophy therein 
contained : why not throw these educative elements into 
relief ? The only way of replacing ideas in literary and 
sesthetic form is, I repeat, to borrow them from mental 
science. The basis of literature is, in fact, eminently social, 
moral, metaphysical, and religious ; the natural sciences only 
contribute their most general results, their great laws, the 
part of their content which is philosophical and for that 
reason at once universal and human. Empty phrases and 
futile declamation will not be avoided because we happen 
to know the laws of combination of acids and bases. Moral 
and social science must constitute the basis of education, 
and it is a dangerous error to take as a basis either mathe- 
matics (being formal) or physics and the natural sciences, 
which are lost in the material of things. 

The remedy for the present evils is not the further 
deo-radation but the elevation of our instruction; literature 
and science touch at their summits, and their point of contact 
is philosophy, the common crown of the humanities with 
man as their object, and of the sciences which have as their 
object the external world. "We have seen among studies 
of the present day that the only subject that is prospering, in 
spite of what has been called the " general bankruptcy of 
education," is philosophy. " Our boys," writes M. Lachelicr, 



CONCLUSION. 29 1 

in his report to the Higher Council, "follow philosophical 
instruction with interest and assimilate it with a facility 
which has heen noted in the general inspection of this year," 
It is not only because, in recent years, instead of decreasing, 
they have increased the work in philosophy (at least in the 
case of students taking up literature), and because philosophy 
is more in harmony with the youthful mind than the mere 
study of words and phrases ; but also and especially because 
the teachers of philosophy have from their very training a 
little more of that passion for the progress of ideas and for 
mental culture or, in a word, of that lay and civic apostleship 
which is essential in every educator of youths. There is in 
French philosophy a forward movement, and in the pro- 
fession our young teachers of philosophy are among the 
most beloved and respected. Let us take advantage of this 
healthy enthusiasm, and if something is living and bearing 
fruit amid the stagnation of classical instruction, let us 
look towards that side on which are to be found enthusiasm, 
fruitfulness, and guiding influence. 

Successive reforms have been attempted in secondary 
education in France ; first a reform in the direction of the 
sciences — on which nothing was poured but contempt ; then 
reform — historical and philological — and more contempt ; 
and finally industrial and professional reform, a greater 
blunder still. One resource alone remains — philosophical 
reform ; i.e. the common co-ordination of literature and 
science with reference to psychology, and moral and social 
science, the foundations of the true humanities. This 
orientation to philosophy is an imperative necessity of the 
day ; savants, men of letters, historians, and geographers 
should all aid us in our efforts ; for there are none of them 
able by their own particular subjects to furnish a basis for 
modern education. If the religious basis is wavering, there 
is but one possible way of supplying its place, viz. the 
culture of the moral and social sciences, the culture of 
philosophy — especially of a philosophy at once positive and 
idealistic. To suppose that pure science or hterature ia 



292 EDUCATION FEOM A NATIONAL STANDPOINT. 

sufficient to replace the old creeds is idle. Even philosophy 
and sociology will have all they can do to bring the struggle 
against the ever-growing realism and utilitarianism of the 
age to a successful issue. The day is coming, say the 
prophets, when France will contain little else but priests, 
poets (if they understand their mission), and philosophers ; 
what bulwark will there be for our national greatness, but 
the sentiment of the beautiful, developed by poetry and art, 
and the sentiment of the good, developed by the knowledge 
of moral and social laws ? "Whatever may be the value of 
these prophecies, one thing is at present certain — the 
evident decrease of religious belief must be met by the 
increasing culture of the aesthetic, and of the moral and 
social sense. Education, becoming less and less theological, 
must be philosophical, or it will cease to exist. 



APPENDIX L 

now TO COMBINE A CLASSICAL TRAINING WITH THE 
STUDY OF ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL SCIENCE. 

I SHALL attempt to show the possibility of reconciling uith the 
study of Latin and Greek a system of instruction less formal, 
more scientific and practical, and at the same time more 
philosophical, moral, and civic, than that which at present 
obtains — responding better to the '' needs of modern societies." 
I shall endeavour to effect a better distribution of work in the 
existing time-tal)les, and so to introduce therein all that our 
reformers dream of under the na^e of " classical French instruc- 
tion." I shall also try to combine with the study of literature 
and philosophy a sound training in either mathematical or in 
physical and natural science. In a word, my object is to 
orientate the whole course towards moral and social science, 
without any very radical change in the present system. 

I. Up to twelve yearrf of age I propose no alteration, keeping 
Latin, which should be begun early, in its present position. 
'J'he reformers propose to make children begin Latin at eleven, 
and they appeal in supi^ort of this proposal to the example of 
those individuals who have learned Latin in a few years. Thus 
they want to treat Latin as a living language, which the student 
learns to know and to use ; they simply want to add one more 
to the many subjects that have to be crammed during the 
last years of school-life. This is a new instance of pedagogic 
aberration ; Latin loses all its virtue — its gradual development 
of the intellect and taste — if it is reduced to a linguistic indiges- 
tion of two or three years, as a mass of words and phrases to bo 
lodged in the storehouse of the memory. Thus understood and 



294 APPENDIX I. 

falsely assimilated to the study of a modern language, the study 
of Latin would be more harmful than useful. 

Starting from children of twelve to thirteen, I propose the 
following modifications : — 

Latin, Greek, the mother tongue, six classes of 2 hours and one class of 
1 hour = 13 hours per \Yeek. 

Modern languages, one class of 1| hour and a lecture, without exercises, 
etc. 

Arithmetic, geometry, two classes of 1 J hour = 3 hours. 

Roman history ; general geography, one class of 1^ hour. 

Special subject in geography — America. 

Drawing, one class of 1 hour. 

Thus we give an extra half-hour to drawing, and combine 
history and geography in a single lesson of an hour and a half. 
The course in geography is a repetition of what has been 
learned in the previous year, and it is therefore unnecessary to 
devote to America more than a whole hour per week for an 
entire year. In the higher divisions, for students intended for 
industrial and commercial life, we return to America, a pro- 
found study of the geography of which is really only useful to 
such students. 



From 13 to 14 Years of Age. 

Hours. 
Latin, Greek, the mother tongue ... ... ... 6 lessons of 2 

Modern languages 1 „ „ 1^ 

(ancl a lecture without preparation on part of student) 1 

Algebra and geometry 1 „ „ 1^ 

Physics 1 »> 55 1^ 

and 1 „ „ 1 
History of Middle Ages ; geography of Africa, Asia, and 

Oceania ... ... ... ••• ••. ... ... 1 » >• 1^ 

Drawing 1 >j »> 1 

Optional lessons in science for students who have a 

scientific career in view. 

Here, as before, the history of the Middle Ages (of but 
moderate interest) and the geography learned at an earlier 
period are combined in one lesson, and will be studied in detail 
later on by students on the commercial and industrial side. 
The time allotted to x)hysics is ample enough to give a funda- 
mental instruction in science to all pupils. 



APPENDIX 1. 295 

FiioM 14 TO 15 Years op Age. 



Hour ■■. 
asses of 2 

1 



Latin, Greek, and the mother tongue |- 

Modern languages (with a lecture of 1 hour) ... ... 1 „ „ 1^ 

Physiology (with 12 lectures on hygiene) 1 „ „ ]^ 

Morals 1 

History of Middle Ages and of modern times. Geography 

of Europe 1 „ „ 1^ 

Drawing (optional) 1 „ „ 2 

Lectures in science to be arranged for science students, and these 
students may also take science in one of 2 hour lessons devoted to Greek 
per week. 

Now, by this scheme, at fourteen or fifteen years of age, a 
general instruction has been given to all boys, and those who 
are intended for a scientific career may devote to science the 
rest of their school-life. Pupils destined for literary pursuits 
have already learned a good deal of science, and fair preponder- 
ance has been given to mathematics and physics. 

On the other hand, students in science have already given 
four years to Greek. This will certainly answer its puri)ose, 
and will be superior to what the science students of former 
days had had on leaving school. From sixteen to seventeen a 
lecture in Greek per week will be quite enough to keep them 
from forgetting what they have learned. Finally, all students 
will have received fundamental instruction in modern languages. 

As soon as the age of sixteen is reached, the student will, as 
a rule, have made up his mind as to his future career. We can 
therefore introduce during the last two years of school-lifo 
sundry accessory subjects without prejudice to the unity of the 
fundamental subjects. From fifteen to sixteen, Greek becomes 
a special subject, not required from all students, and the time 
allotted to Greek may be devoted to other subjects. 



Instruction to Pupils from 15 to 16 Years of Age. 
Classes in Fundamental Subjects, common to all Students. 





Hours. 


Hours. 


The mother tongue ... 


... 4 


Modern history and the 


Latin 


... 4 


geography of the mother 


Modern languages ... 


... H 


country ... ... ... IJ 





Hours. 


Mathematics 


... 2 


Physics 


2 


Chemistry 


::: k 


Natural history 


... 2 



296 APPENDIX I. 



Special Course for Students in Literature. 

Hours. Hours. 

Greek 4 Cosmography and chemistry 1^ 

^Esthetics and the history of Extra history and geography l| 

art 1 

Special Course for Students in Science and MathemaHcs. 

Honrs. 

Mathematical and physical science 7| 

Extra class in German (or French) 1 

Revision of Greek (lectures) 15 

Spiecial Course in Physics and Natural Science. 

Hours, 
Extra lecture in modern 
languages... ... ... 1 

Extra lecture in Greek, 15 lectures. 
Practical chemistry. 

Special Course in Economics and Industrial Science. 

Hours. 

Extra lessons in modern languages 3 

Commercial and industrial geography of Europe and of the mother 
country ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 

Mathematics — algebra, descriptive geometry, mechanics 2 

Physics and applied chemistry 1| 

Book-keeping, etc ,. 1 

Revision of Greek 15 lectures. 

Practical chemistry. 



Instruction to Students from 16 to 17 Years of Age, 

Fundamental Suhjects taken hy all Students. 

Hours. 
Philosophy (psychology, the main conclusions of logic, first principles 

and final conclusions of ethics, natural and mental philosojjhy) ... 5 
Contemporary history 1 

Course for Students in Literature. 

Hours. Hours. 

Extra classes in philosophy. Common law 1 

History of philosophy. Revision of mathematics ... 1| 

Greek, Latin, and French Revision of physics ... ]| 

(or English, etc.) philo- Drawing (optional) IJ 

sophers ... ... ... 3 Modern languages (lectures, 

Political economy IJ optional) 1 

Civic and political instruction 1^ 



APPENDIX I. 297 

Course for Students in Mathematics, 

Honrg. 

Mathematics and physical science 12 

Modern hinguages 1^ 

Special Course for Students in Physics and Natural Science. 

Hours. 
Mathematics ... ... ... .., ... ... ... ... 2 

Physics and organic chemistry ... ... ... ... ... 2 

Botany 2 

Modern languages ... ... ... ... ... ... ... IJ 

Political economy and social science (in common with students of 

literature) ... , 1 

Civic and political instruction (in common with students of literature) 1 
Common law ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 

Drav/ing (optional) ... 1 

Here I add to physical and natural science a modicum of 
moral and social science, as I cannot admit that the require- 
ments of the faculty of medicine (for instance) are so exacting 
as to necessitate the sacrifice of moral and social science to 
botany and chemistry, which already are taking up more time 
than is needed. A doctor exercises a social influence which 
renders imperative a knowledge of social economy, politics, and 
common law. Our future doctors should have a really liberal 
and civic education.* 

Special Course for Students in Economic and Industrial Science. 

Hours. 

Modern languages 3 

Mathematics, book-keeping, etc. ... ... ... ... ... 2 

Physics and organic chemistry ... l^ 

Political economy (in common with the students in literature) .,. l| 

Civic and political instruction ... ... ... ... ... i 

Legislation 1 

Industrial, commercial, and rural economy (for the first half-year) ] J 
Geography (industrial and commercial) of America, Asia, Africa, 

Oceania (for the second half-year). 
Optional lessons in drawing, modern languages, book-keeping, etc. 

Practical chemistry. 

On considering the subjects suggested for students intended 
for commercial and industrial life, we see that they are ample 

* Here I keep in their true place moral and social science, which in the 
higher walks of industry and commerce are absolutely necessary, because 
of the social influence of great manufacturers and merchants. 



298 APPENDIX I. 

for tlie purpose; they only require completion by tecliiiical 
instruction to become a liberal and utilitarian preparation for 
industry and commerce. The part assigned to living languages 
is wide enough to allow of a sound study of one fundamental 
language (French or German) and of the acquisition of primary 
notions of a complementary language. More cannot be expected 
at school ; and those who will take the more responsible 
positions in the world of industry and commerce cannot dispense 
with residence abroad for the purpose of learning languages. 
Enough industrial and commercial geography is taught to 
familiarize the student with the great producing towns and the 
great markets. Political economy, civic instruction, consti- 
tutional law, and legislation have their due share of time. I 
have merely given to economic and industrial science its 
legitimate role without prejudicing classical culture. 

IT. The spirit and the letter of the programmes must be 
reformed, details too technical for our purpose must be 
suppressed, and we must add general, philosophical, and 
historical ideas, adapted to throw light on each study and to 
make the student understand the end in view. 

General Observations on the Teaching of Science. 

The teacher, as J. B. Dumas recommends, must make the 
teaching of science play its part " in mental culture, and must 
make it educative." 

His object will therefore be not to make the student learn much, 
but to make him learn what is necessary and what is beautiful. 
Instruction in science will teach (1) a few accurate and 
characteristic facts selected from the most familiar; (2) the 
most general and most beautiful laws of science; (3) the 
principles and conclusions of science, and the most general 
ideas to which we are led by particular facts. All should bo 
both interesting and systematized. 

The teacher must also give as interesting a sketch as possible 
of the great discoveries. He will avoid abstract explanations, 
but not the general and even philosophical views which arouse 
the interest and widen the mental horizon of the young. 

The teacher will never dictate his lesson ; at most he will 
dictate a summary as accurate and as brief as possible. 

He will also avoid mechanical repetitions of his statements. 



APPENDIX I. 299 

As exercises he should require short essays on soine determined 
subjects ; or an account of an experiment with all its more 
important consequences ; or a series of written answers to 
interesting questions ; or, finally, one or more easy problems for 
solation. 

The active method must always be preferred to the passive. 

"The more complicated details," says Dumas, "should be 
left for the higher instruction given to our future savants, and 
the teacher should limit himself to the exposition of those simple 
ideas ivliich everybody ivill need." Dumas also rightly insists 
upon a change in our method of teaching natural science by 
processes and school apparatus. Instead of studying the great 
book of nature, we limit ourselves to experiments with 
expensive apparatus, the mechanism of which — as complicated 
as it is unnecessary — masks the thoughts of the inventor and 
discourages imitation. " The teaching of physics is too often 
controlled by the apparatus-makers. . . . What could be more 
simple than the means employed by Volta, Dalton, Gay-Lussac, 
Biot, Arago, Mains, Fresnel, etc., when they were laying tho 
foundations of modern physics? . . . Physics must not lower 
its ideal, nor should it forget to teach an admiration of cosmic 
phenomena and laws; as taught at present, it simply con- 
centrates the whole of the attention of the student upon the 
apparatus employed for exact measurement or for the ascertain- 
ing of those laws." 

A very short summary of each science should be placed in 
the hands of pupils as a text-book. An appendix should 
contain interesting chapters on scientific subjects, and a history 
of the great inventions and inventors. 

It would be advantageous if such text-books were compiled 
in collaboration by a teacher of science and a teacher of philo- 
sophy. The special knowledge of the former is indispensable ; 
the latter — besides his literary and philosophic training in the 
art of composition, writing, and teaching — would bring to tho 
subject general and synthetic views, careful simplifications, and 
finally the desire to make the whole tend to the promotion of 
intellectual and moral education. 

The following suggestions are made as to tho reforms which 
are needed in the programmes at this stage. 



300 APPENDIX I. 

Introduction to the Programme of Physics. 

1. Elementary notions of extension, motion, force. Matter 
and its qualities. Our ignorance of the essence of matter. A 
few notes on the atoms of Democritus and of Epicurus ; on the 
importance attached by Dsscartes to the idea of extension, and 
by Leibnitz to active force. The modesty of the true savant. 

% The different states of matter. 

3. Direction of gravity. Centre of gravity. Weight. The 
balance. Galileo. The rules of observation in physics. 

4. Universal gravity. Descartes, Newton, Laplace. The 
rules and the importance of hypothesis in physics. Beauty of 
the Newtonian hypothesis. 

5. Hydrostatics. Archimedes, Pascal. Free surface of liquids 
in equilibrium. Equality of pressure in all directions. Pressure 
on the sides of vessels. Vessels connected with each other. 

6. The law of Archimedes. Specific weight. The Areo- 
meter. 

7. Atmospheric pressure. The barometer. History of its 
invention. 

8. Mariotte's law. His experiments. Piules of experiment 
in physics. Methods of experiment. Induction. Examples 
taken from the previous sections. 

9. Pneumatic machines. Pumps. Pascal's hydraulic press. 

10. Syphon. iErostats. Their history. Role of deduction 
in physics, etc. 

The programme to be continued in this manner. 

Introduction to the Programme in Chemidry. 

Chemistry ; its importance, beauty, utility, and various appli- 
cations. 

A succinct and interesting sketch of its origin and progress. 
The sacred art of the Egyptians. 

Arabian alchemy. Eaymond Lulli. Paracelsus. Van Hel- 
mont. The eighteenth century. Chemistry in England. 
Priestley and the English chemists. 

Introduction to the Course in Zoology. 

What is nature ? Its grandeur and beauty. 

What are the natural sciences ? Define the principal natural 
sciences: Zoology, botany, geology. The importance, interest, 
and utility of the natural sciences. 



APPENDIX I. 301 

Ohstrvation in the natural sciences. Qualities of the observer. 

Analogy in the animal kingdom. Utility and variety of 
animal types. Fecundity of type. 

A few remarks on the most celebrated naturalists : Aristotle, 
LinnaBus, Bufifon, Jussieu, Cuvier, Lamarck, Gecffroy Saint- 
Hilaire, etc. 

England and her great naturalists. 

Introduction to the Course in Geology. 

Object of geology ; its importance, interest, and application 
to industry. The earth, its history, etc. A few great English 
geologists. 

Notions on the successive appearance of different groups of 
animals and vegetables. 

Yery general and simple reflections on adaptation to the 
environment, or the struggle for existence among animals, on 
the progress of living species from vegetables and zoophytes to 
man. 

Introduction to the Course in Botany. 

Object of botany; its beauty, importance, utility, and 
practical applications. 

Great botanists. The part played by England in the progress 
of botany. 

The meaning of classification in natural sciences. Beauty of 
natural classification. How it reproduces the actual order of 
nature, the true resemblances and differences of beings, etc. 

Introduction to the Course in Arithmetic. 

The science of numbers ; its beauty, importance, necessity, 
and application in science, industry, and commerce. Numbers 
govern the world. The wonderful laws and combinations of 
numbers. The sages of antiquity and their interest in the laws 
of numbers : Pythagoras and Plato. 

Great English mathematicians. England and the progress of 
mathematics. 

Explanations of numeration and the decimal system should 
be accompanied by interesting historical details — the origin of 
the ordinary scale of notation, the invention of figures, their 
form, the decimal and metric systems, etc. In general, add to 
the absolutely necessary abstractions as many concrete instances 
as possible, and insist on the interest of practical aiDplications. 



302 APPENDIX I. 

Introduction to the Course in Geometry, 

What is mathematical science? Numbers and extension. 
Arithmetic and geometry. 

The beauty of geometry ; its importance and practical neces- 
sity. Eapid sketch of its origin and progress. Egypt and 
Greece. Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Euclid. English geometers. 
French geometers: Descartes, Pascal, Monge. German geo- 
meters : Leibnitz. 

Methods in geometry. Definitions, axioms, constructions, 
demonstrations. 

What is reasoning by deduction ? Imagination in geometry. 
The geometrical spirit; its advantages and drawbacks. Pascal 
on the geometrical spirit and subtlety of thought. Can every- 
thing be reasoned geometrically ? 

N.B. — To mention Pythagoras and the Indians in connection 
with Euc. i. 47. Euclid and the successive efforts of geometers 
ajjropos of the postulate of parallels. " To teach geometry apart 
from its history, and making a tabula rasa of the past, is not 
without its disadvantages" (J. B. Damas). Do not neglect 
its practical applications — in mensuration and industry. Make 
problems as interesting as possible ; as, for instance " Find the 
height of a mountain," ... or, "Find the distance of the 
earth from the moon. . . ," 

Introduction to the Course in Algebra. 

Algebra ; its importance, beauty, utility, and practical appli- 
cations. The power it gives to the human mind. Sketch 
of its origin and progress. The school of Alexandria ; the Arabs. 
English algebraists. French algebraists. Note : Maria Agnesi 
in the eighteenth, and Sophie Germain in the nineteenth 
century among women who were able algebraists. 

Introduction to the Course in Cosmography. 

Astronomy; its importance, beauty, and utility. Sketch of 
its history. The Chaldeans and Egyptians. The Greeks: 
Thales, Pythagoras. The school of Alexandria, etc. 

N.B.— Tliis course should be rather given to a physicist than 
to a mathematician, for the latter has a tendency to reduco 
astronomy to abstract theorems. 



APPENDIX I. 303 

Introduction to the Course in Latin, 

Why we learu Latin and Greek. Eelation of Latin to Eng- 
lish. 

Beauty of the Latin language. Beauty of the Greek language. 

Influence of Latin and Greek literature upon English. 

Latin the language of Christianity. 

Utility of Latin ; (1) to develop mind and taste ; (2) to lenrn 
to write English. National and patriotic character of the study 
of Latin. Latin and Greek, and their place in education iu 
Germany and France. Eeasons why neo-Latin races should not 
be behind Anglo-Saxon and German races in the study of the 
classics. 

The principal linguistic exercises : (1) grammar ; (2) trans- 
lation ; (3) exercises ; (4) commentary on texts ; (5) composi- 
tion. Their use. How interesting they are when the student 
gees their importance and utility. 

N.B.— Only choose fine passages for translation. Always 
comment on the texts translated from the point of view of 
literature, history, and morals. 

Introduction to the Course in Modern Languages. 

Parents should choose the languages taken by the student, 
and give a definite reason for their choice. 

A circular should be sent round, laying before the parents 
the advantages of the different languages and their practical 
application ; the parents should then choose the languages best 
adapted for the future career of their children. 

Introduction to the Course of History. 

1. Definition of history; its place in moral and social science; 
its importance and utility. Educative value of history: (1) it 
contributes to intellectual education by cultivating the imagina- 
tion, to which it presents "real but varied and picturesque 
objects," by accustoming the mind to discernment, apprecia- 
tion, and judgment of facts, persons, ideas, epochs, countries, 
etc.; (2) it contributes to moral and political education, by 
laying down the experimental bases of social science. 

2. Method of establishing facts by evidence, documents, 
monuments, etc. Criticism of human evidence: (1) judicial 
facts ; (2) historical facts ; (3) in matters cf belief (criticism of 
fables, legends, mythology). 



304 APPENDIX I. 

3. Methods of history : (1) in explaining facts by means of 
their general and particular causes; (2) judgments of facts 
according to the principles of moral, social, and political science. 
Meaning of " the philosophy of history." Danger of abstract 
historical systems. 

4. Summary of the development of historical studies from 
antiquity onwards. The great historians. Qualities necessary 
to the historian ; faults he must avoid. 

Introduction to the Course in Otography. 

Giography; its importance and utility. How it develops: 
(1) the imagination, by the pictures it presents to it; (2) 
the reasoning powers, by the explanations it affords of the 
political, commercial, and industrial history of different nations ; 
(3) the moral sense, by exhibiting the struggle of man with 
nature ; (4) the civic sense, by exhibiting the resources and the 
field of action of England, with the competition of her 
neighbours. 

Course in Esthetics, Ltteratues, History op Literature 
AND OF Art. 

Define cesthetics. Beauty and interest of aesthetics. 

The beautiful. Eelation between the beautiful and the true. 
The beautiful and the agreeable. The beautiful and the good. 

The sublime. Grace. 

Laughter and the ridiculous. The comic. 

What is art ? Expression in art. Idealism and realism in 
art. The various arts. 

Architecture. Short abstract of the history of architecture. 
Greek and modern architecture. 

Sculpture. Short abstract of the history of sculpture. 
Sculpture in modern times. 

Painting. Short abstract of the history of painting. 

Music. Short abstract of the history of music. 

Poetry. English poetry. 

Epic poetry. Lyric poetry. Dramatic poetry: tragedy, 
comedy, the drama. 

Eloquence. Ehetoric : its dangers. 

Invention. Demonstration and its general rules. Sojohisms 
of the mind and heart. 

General rules of composition. 



APPENDIX I. 305 

Style. The ditTcrcut literary styles. 

Progress and decadence in the arts. 

The transformations of art. Classical and romantic periods. 

Conclusions : moral and social role of art. 



Vide p. 215. 



Course of Ethics. 

Course in Political Economy. 

I )it rod act ion. 

Political economy; its object, importance, and beauty. The 
growing need for polilical economy in modern and democratic 
societies. Its relations with other sciences— notably with law. 
^ Divisions of political economy : production, distribution, 
circulation, and consumption of wealth. 

1. Production of Wealth.— TAe elements of production ;— 
i. Law and natural agents. 

ii. Work and industry : organization and freedom of work ; 
historical summary ; corporations. Classification of the various 
industries. Commerce. The middleman. 

iii. Capital legitimate and necessary. Different kinds of 
capital. How thrift accumulates and makes capital. 

2. Distribution OF Wealth.— i. Proper^^. Private property; 
account and reputation of the principal systems condemning it; 
the origin of intestate succession and the law of testament. ^ 

ii. Conventions. (1) Farming. Rent of the soil. Different 
systems of culture; hirge and small culture; disadvantages of 
too minute a division,and of too great a concentration of property. 

(2) Capital, and its part iti the division of wealth ; interest • 
legitimacy of interest. ' 

(3) The 2-)art of the middleman. Profits. 

(4) The part of the luorhing man. Application to labour of 
the law of supply and demand. 

Wages. Sharing in profits. Trades unions. Co-operative 
associations. 

(5) Socialism ; its various forms. Criticism of socialism. 
Population and the distribution of wealth. Poverty and 

I^auperism. The struggle against pauperism. 

3. Circulation of Wealth.—]. Exchange: its different forms. 

33 



806 APPENDIX I. 

Value. Price. Laws regulating the fixing, variation, and 
equilibrium of prices. Competition. Monopolies. 

ii. Money. 

iii. Crvdit. How it takes the place of money, and is a source 
of wealth. Credit and thrift. (1) Private credit: banks; (2) 
Public credit ; its bases ; state loans. 

iv. External and internal commerce. Commercial crises ; their 
causes and remedies. Imports and exports. Markets. Balance 
of commerce; regulated by cash or by international funds. 
Free trade; protection and prohibition. Commercial treaties. 
Customs. Bonded warehouses. Auctions. 

4. Consumption of Wealth.— i. Thrift : its resources, fore- 
sight. Insurance of life, against fire, and against accident. 
Savings banks. Friendly societies. 

ii. Luxuries. 

5. Application of Political Economy to Financial Legis- 
lation. — i. Tl/cces: Different kinds of taxes. Proportional taxes. 
Sliding scale of taxes. 

ii. The Budget : How constructed. The budget vote. 

The teacher must avoid giving his lessons an abstract 
character; he will confine himself to teaching his pupils— in 
proportion to their age — elementary economic facts, and how 
from these facts we get certain general laws, and the value of 
these laws in commercial, social, and industrial crises. 

Course of Civic and Political Instruction. 

Social and political science in its old sense. Its increasing 
importance ; its beauty, necessity, and difficulty. Its founders : 
Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Montesquieu, Eousseau, Comte. Its 
future. Its method — exjDerimental and rational. 

1. Ideal Politics, — Ideal politics, or the determination of tlie 
end society should keep in view. The good of the individual or 
the State? Should the individual and the State pursue the 
good, the virtuous, liberty, and justice? Ancient and modern 
politics. 

Relation of ideal politics to psychology, ethics, and natural 
law. Distinction between politics and ethics. 

The necessity (1) of an ideal conforming to the true moral 
aims of humanity ; (2) of an adaptation of that ideal to reality. 

2. Eeal Politics. — Real and experimental politics, or 
sociology properly so called. The different organs and func- 



APPENDIX I. 307 

tions of the social body, and tho laws of their evolution. Tho 
extreme difficulty of social science; the spirit of reserve which 
must ensue in social and ])olitical questions. 

The most important laws of equilibrium and conservation in 
societies — social statics. 

The most important laws of the development of societies — 
social dynamics. 

3. The State.— Distinction between the State and the govern- 
ment. Origin and attributes of government. Individual liberty 
and national sovereignty. The true and false sense in wliich tho 
nation'd sovereignty may be interpreted. Danger of abstract 
and absolute systems. 

Different powers of the State: legislative, executive, judicial. 

Organization of the legislative power; ideal principle of 
unanimity; the necessary substitution in practice of the 
principle of majorities for that of unanimity. The rational 
basis and rational limits of the power of the majorities. Respect 
due to the rights of minorities. 

System of the two houses; its rational and historical basis. 

Organization of the executive. Different /or?ris of government. 
Their advantages and disadvantages. Eational and philo- 
sophical character of a limited monarchy; its advantages, 
difficulties, and the peculiar qualities it requires in the citizens 
and governing bodies. 

Organization ot the judicial power of the State. Penality and 
its social basis. 

Organization of the military power of the State. Defensive 
and offensive armies. Advantages and disadvantages of 
democratic armies ; increasing necessity for military disciplina 
in free countries; the duties of the soldier. 

The evolution of governments ; rtvolidions, their causes, in- 
conveniences ; how to avoid them. 

Applied politics. — The difficulty. How they should reconcile 
the ideal, the real, and the possible. Comparison of applied 
politics with medicine or applied physiology. 



Course of Legislation— Publto and Civil Eights. 

1. Public Eights.— Law. Natural law. Positive law. Eo- 
lation of ethics to law. 
Divisions of law: (1) Public law (constitutional law, ad- 



308 APPENDIX I. 

ministrative law, criminal law, law of nations) ; (2) private 
law (civil law, commercial law). Codes. 

i. Biyhts guaranteed to the citizen. Civil equality. Private 
liberty. Liberty of conscience. Liberty of labour. Liberty of 
union and association. Liberty of the press. The taxes. 
Military service. 

ii. Public poiuers. Constitutional laws. Powers of the legis- 
lative and executive; how and why they are separated. The 
legislative and executive: king, lords, and commons. The 
executive : the prime minister and the cabinet. 

iii. Administrative organization. County Councils. Local 
government. 

iv. Judicial organization. Justice: public and free. Civil 
jurisdiction : (1) supreme court of appeal ; (2) the law courts ; 
(8) the county courts ; (4) the magistrates and justices of the 
peace. Barristers and solicitors. 

V. General idea of criminal law. Eesponsibility as recognized 
by the criminal law. Distinction between crimes, mis- 
demeanours, and minor offences. The police courts. The 
police. 

2. Civil Rights. — i. Persons and the family. (1) Nationality. 
Status of foreigners. (2) Constitution of the family ; how it is 
formed. Eights and duties in the family. Parental and 
marital, authority. (3) Protection of the weak; guardianship. 
(4) The principal facts in civic life: birth, marriage, death. 

ii. Property. (1) How acquired ; inviolable (save in case of 
public utility). How it is lost (2) Dehts ; diiferent kinds of 
obligations. How the rights of the creditor arise; how 
guaranteed (privilege, hypothec, pledge). 

iii. Sticcession. Different classes of heirs; descendants, as- 
cendants, and collaterals. Division among children. How 
succession is acquired. Obligations of an heir; inventory; 
right of refusing succession. Wills; different kinds of wills; 
different kinds of legacies. 

iv. Defence of rights. A summary of general notions on legal 
claims, procedure, proof, judgment; how a judgment is carried 
out ; court of appeal. 

We now come to the course of philosophy. Two hypotheses 
are possible as to the place of philosophy in a classical training. 
Philosophy may be left until the last year or so of school-life - 
crowning the school- course, and in that case the course of 



APPENDIX I. 309 

ethics at fonrfeen or fifteen, and of eesthetics at sixteen or seven- 
teen, inip:ht be replaced by courses in science. 
In this case we should divide the classes as follows : — 

From 14 io 15. 

Honra, 

English (3), Lfitin (5), Greek (4) 12 

Modern languages || 

Mathematics ... ... ... .•• ••• ••• ••• ^| 

Animal and vegetable physiology I2 

History of the^Middle Ages and of modern times; geography of 
Europe 



n 



From 15 to 16. Classes for all students. 



Hours. 
4 



English ... ... , ... ••• ••• ••• ••• 

Latin 4- 

Modern history ; geograj^hy of United Kingdom 2 

Modern languages ... ... ... ... ••• ••• ••• ^2 



From 16 to 17. Classes for all students. 



Hours. 



Philosophy (psychology, ethics, theory of knowledge and general 

philosophy; essays) 7| 

Contemporary history 1 

The following is the present course in philosophy, slightly 
modified : — 

Philosophy (16 to 17). Couese for all Students. 

Introduction.— Science ; the sciences, philosophy. Object 
and divisions of philosophy. Its speculative, moral, and social 
importance. Progress of philosophy from antiquity to the 
present day. 

1. Psychology.— Object of psychology ; character of the facts 
with which it deals; psychological and physiological facts. 
Impossible for physiology to include psychology. Moral and 
pedagogic value of psychology. 

Method of psychology : subjective, reflection ; objective, lan- 
guage, history, etc. 

Experiment in psychology. Constant progress of psychology. 

Classification of psychological facts: sensibility, intellect, 

will. 

Stnsibilitrj. Pleasure, pain, sensation, sentiment. The in- 
clinations. The passions. Moral and pedagogic deductions. 

Intellect. Acquisition, conservation, and development of 
knowledge. Data of mental activity. 



310 APPENDIX I. 

The senses. Consciousness. The problem of the nnconscions. 
Memory. Association. Application to intellectual education. 

The imagination. How cultivated. Abstraction and generali- 
zation. The judgment ; pedagogic application. 

Eeasoning. Deduction, induction, analogy. 

The will. Instinct, liberty, habit. Heredity. Limits of 
heredity ; power of education, of ideas, of sentiments. Applica- 
tions to pedagogy. 

The expression of psychological facts : signs and langnage. 

The relations of the physical and the moral. 

Sleep, dreams, somnambulism, hallucinations, hypnotism, 
madness. 

Brief abstract of comparative psychology ; man and animals. 

2. Ethics. — Principles of ethics. The conscience, the good, 
duty. 

Examination of utilitarian doctrines. What every science of 
manners can learn from them. 

Examination of evolutionist doctrines. What every science of 
manners can learn from them. 

The conditions of the most intensive and expansive life for the 
individual and for society. 

Duties, — Duties towards ourselves : wisdom, courage, temj)er- 
ance. 

Duties towards others : right, justice, charity (vide p. 215). 

Duties towards the family. 

Duties towards our country : obedience to the laws, instruc- 
tion, taxes, voting, military service, patriotism. 

3. General Philosophy. — i. Criticism of Knowledge. 
Origin of knowledge. Guiding principles of knowledge. Can 

they be explained entirely by experience, association, or 
heredity ? 

Value of knowledge. Dogmatism, scepticism; criticism of 
Kant. 

Limits of hiowledge. Different theories on this subject. 
Kant's critical philosophy. 

Comte and positivism. Spencer and the unknowable. 

ii. Philosophy of Nature and Cosmology, 

Of nature in general. Different conceptions of matter and 
life. 
The great hypotheses to which the sciences of nature lead us. 



APPENDIX I. 811 

Inarlequacy of these hypotheses for tlio solution of the enigma 
of life. 



iii. Mental Philosophy, 

Materialism, spiritualism, idealism. 

Religious beliefs. Their speculative raison d'etre ; their 
moral and social importance. 

Speculative and moral reasons on which beliefs in God of 
every form are based. 

The problem of evil. Optimism and pessimism. The moral 
reasons upon which every belief in the final triumph of good , 
or in a Providence is based. 

Speculative and moral reasons upon which belief in the 
immortality of the soul is based. 

Conclusion. Progress of philosophy from antiquity to tho 
present day. The " perennial " character of philosophy. 

N.B. — The teacher must bear in mind the calibre of his class. 
In psychology he will not touch on the very difficult or 
subtle points on which there is divergence of opinion, but will 
confine himself to throwing into relief the main results of 
psychology. He will give psychology a practical bearing by 
showing its application to education. In logic he will keep to 
the essential theories which are admitted by all philosophers. 
Similarly in ethics he will keep to such points as are main- 
tained by the partisans of both the evolutionist and the ct priori 
schools, and will give to his course an eminently social and 
civic bearing. In general philosophy and metaphysics he will 
exhibit the common points of beliefs rather than their diver- 
gence ; he will avoid the euristic method, the abuse of thesis and 
antithesis, and the extremes of controversy. He must take a 
broad view of the whole subject, and confine himself to *' prin- 
ciples." His end, in a word, must be educative and adapted to 
the young. Without depriving philosophy of its lofty specula- 
tive character, he will give to his course of lessons a practical 
bearing. He will consider himself not as a mere savant, but as 
the principal lay representative of great moral and social 
interests in the education of the young, and as having, ipso 
facto, in the well-known phrase, " a cure of souls." 

Contrary to a widespread prejudice, I have sacrificed logic in 
the case of students destined to a scientific or industrial career. 
In the first place, I have already added all tho essential part of 



312 APPENDIX I. 

logic to the different programmes for science classes; and, 
secondly, the study of science does not absolutely need com- 
pletion by formal logic, while it ought to be supplemented by 
psychology, ethics, and general natural and mental philosophy. 

SUPPLEMENTAEY PEOGEAMME FOE STUDENTS 
TAKING UP LITEEATUEE AND PHILOSOPHY. 

I. PeINCIPLES of iESTHETICS. 

The beautiful. The sublime. The graceful. The ridicu- 
lous. 

Art. Expression, imitation, fiction, the ideal. Eealism and 
idealism. The truth contained in each. 

The different arts. 

II. Logic. 

Formal logic. — Terms; propositions; different forms of reason- 
ing ; notions admitted by all philosophers. 

Applied logic. — Its progress from the earliest times. Method 
of the exact sciences — axioms, definitions, demonstration. 

Method of natural and physical sciences— observation, ex- 
periment, hypothesis, induction. 

Classification, analogy, empirical definitions. 

Method in moral science — evidence ; the historic method. 

Errors and sophism. 

III. Absteact of the Geeat Philosophical Docteines. 

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ; the Epicureans and Stoics ; Bacon, 
Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant. 

N.B. — The teacher must not go into details, and instead of 
laying stress upon the contradictions of the various systems, he 
must confine himself to showing the progress of ideas from one 
doctrine to another, even on points when a final solution is still 
w^anting. 

IV. Philosophees. — English, 
Oreek authors. 
Xenophon. Short extracts from the " Memorabilia." 
Plato. Short extracts from the " Eepublic and Phiedo." 
Aristotle. Extracts from the "Nicomachean Ethics," bk. x. 
Epictetus. Extracts from the " Manual." 



APPENDIX L 



313 



Latin. 
Lucretius. Extracts from " De Natura Eerum." 
Cicero. Extracts from " De Officiis." 
Seneca. Extracts from " Letters to Lucilius." 
If the course in philosophy is spread over two years, the student 

may take in the first year-(l) psychology; (2) c-esthetics; 

(3) logic. The next year-(l) ethics ; (2) criticism of knowledge ; 

(3) general, natural, and mental philosophy; (4) history of 

philosophy and of philosophical authors. 
If the course is divided over three years (as in Italy), the 

student will take the course of ethics at fourteen or fifteen, of 

aesthetics and logic at fifteen or sixteen. The study of sesthetics, 

logic, and psychology is valuable in rhetoric, because it gives 

depth to the mind and gives boys ideas for their essays, etc. 

True eloquence is an application of psychology, aesthetics, and 

logic. 

III. For the Final Examination (on leaving ScnooL) in 

LiTERATUEE AND PHILOSOPHY (THE B. JjS L. ET Ph.). 



First Examination (15 to 16). 



Relative 

Values. 

2 



Latin translation (2 hours) .•• ••• • 

English essay on a subject in literature or history (o hours) ... ^ 

An easy piece of German or French prose (1 J hour) 1 

An easy piece of Greek translation (1^ hour) 



Viva Voce. 

Relative Relative 



Values. 

Explanation of Greek author 1 History 

Explanation of Latin author 1 Geography... 

Explanation of English Modern languages 

author 1 

General ideas of classical 

literature 1 

Second Examination (IG to 17). 



Values. 
1 
1 
1 



Relative 
Values. 
2 



Essay in philosophy (4 hours) ... ... _ ... /••.,,.•• 

Essay on a subject in economic and political science or legislation 

(2''hours) ••• \ 

Paper on mathematics and physics (2 hours) 1 



314 



APPENDIX I. 



Viva Voce. 



Philosophy... ,,. 
History of philosophy 
Greek, Latin, and English 

philosophers 
Political economy ... 



Relative 
Values. 



Relative 
Values. 
Politics and legislation ... 1 
Mathematics ... ... 1 

Physics and natural sciences 1 
Contemporary history ... 1 



For Students taking up Literature and Mathematics 
(B. ks L. ET Math.). 

First Examination (15 to 16). 



Latin translation (2 hours) ... ... ••• ... .., 

English essay on a subject in literature or ethics (4 hours) 
Exercises in modern languages (IJ hour) ... ,., 



Relative 
Values. 
. 2 
. 2 
. 1 



Viva Voce. 



Mathematics 
I'hysics 
Latin authors 
Greek 



Relative 
Values. 
2 
. 2 
. 1 
. 1 



English 

A modern language 
History and geography 



Relative 
Values. 
1 
. 1 
. 1 



Second Examination (16 to 17). 



Essays : Philosophy (4 hours) 
Mathematics (2 hours) 
Physics (2 hours) ... 



Relative 
Values. 
, 1 
1 
. 1 



Viva Voce. 



Philosophy... 
Mathematics 



Relative 
Values. 
1 
. 2 



Physics ... 
Contemporary history 



Relative 

Values. 

o 



For Students taking up Literature and Natural Science 
(B. i:s L. ET Sc). 



First Examination (15 to 16). 



Latin translations (2 hours) ,t. 

English essay on a subject in literature or ethics 
Exercises in modern languages (1^ hour) ... 



Relative 
Values, 
. 2 
. 2 
. 1 



APrENDIX I. 



315 



Viva Voce, 



Mathematics 
Physics 

Natural science 
Latin authors 



Relative 

Values. 

1 

. 1 

2 

'. 1 



Greek 

English 

Modern lant^uages ... 

History and geography 



i^'econd Examination (16 to 17). 



Essays: Philosophy (4 hours) ... ... 

Physics and natural science (4 hours) 

Viva Voce. 



Philosophy 

Econonnc and political 
sciences, legislation 



Relative 
Vahies. 

1 

1 

1 
. 1 



Relative 

Values. 

1 

1 



Relative Relative 

Values. Values. 

1 Mathematics 1 

Physics and natural science 2 
Contemporary history ... 1 



For Students taking up Literature and Economic and 
Industrial Science (B. i;s L. et Econ. et In dust.). 

First Examination (15 to 16). 



Latin translation 

English essay on a subject in literature or ethics 

Exercises in modern languages 

Paper on mathematics 



Vim Voce. 



Mathematics 

Physics and natural sciences 

Latin authors 

Greek authors 



Relative 
Values. 

1 

1 

1 

1 



English authors 
Modern languagi 
History 
Geography ... 



Second Examination (16 to 17). 



Essay on some subject in ])hilosophy 
Paper on natural sciences and physics 



Viva Voce. 



Relative 
Values. 

Philosophy ... 1 

I'olitical economy and politics 1 
Legislation ... ... ... 1 

IMatheuiatics and bookkeeping 1 



Relative 
Values. 
. 1 
. 1 
1 
. 1 



Relative 
Values. 
. 1 

1 

1 



Relative 
Values. 
; 1 

2 



Relative 

Values. 
Physics and natural sciences 2 
Contemporary history ... 1 
Industrial and commercial 
geography 1 



APPENDIX IT. 

THE SENSE OF BROTHERHOOD, AND ITS ROLE IN THE 
SCHOOL* 

Gentlemen, 

By inviting me to represent him and to take the chair 
at this ceremony, the Minister of Public Instruction has done 
me an honour which I was far from expecting. No doubt he 
felt that the mere fact that my life has been spent in teaching 
would in itself secure for me a warm welcome from your society 
and from the masters of our primary schools. My only claim 
upon your kindness is that I have made a careful study, from 
the standpoint of pure or applied philosophy, of the problems 
relating the moral instruction of our youth. Do you not, 
gentlemen, believe with Plato and with all philosophers that 
the future of a republic depends upon the education received 
by its children ? In 1815, when Carnot, one of your founders, 
was discussing your statutes and devising plans for the spread 
of education, a courier brought the news of Waterloo. Carnofc 
felt that the work begun should not be interrupted. No doubt 
he understood what Fichte understood when he was organizing 
primary instruction in Prussia after Jena : the fortune of war 
changes, material triumphs last but for a time and pass away; 
intellectual and moral instruction does not pass away; truth 
has no Waterloo. How many governments have passed away 
since that solemn hour! How many reforms have you initiated 
in the name of individual liberty — reforms whose success has 
been due to the skill and esprif; de corps of your members — • 
mutual instruction, choral societies, gymnastics in schools, 
regimental schools, popularizing of political economy, prizes 

♦ Delivered in 1886 at the annual prize distribution of the Soci^td 
pour rinstruction Elementaire. 



APPENDIX II. 317 

for the best reading-books for schools, etc.! How many 
illustrious men have been in your midst ! how many have pre- 
sided over your meetings, from Jean-Baptiste Say, Maine de 
Birau, Cuvier, and Ampere, to Victor Hugo, who addressed the 
children gathered round this chair in the following words : 
" You are in the right road ; the evil is behind you ; the good 
is before you. Courage ! Keep your eyes ever fixed upon the 
brightness of the dawn." 

The influence of this society is, I think, due to two factors 
without Y>^hich no permanent union is possible : liberty for each, 
fraternity for all. You are thus bringing into play the two 
main divisions of the motto on our monuments and on the very 
walls of our schools; you have done in miniature what the 
country is wishing to do on a large scale. In these days, 
gentlemen, France may look back with pride at the liberty and 
equality she has already realized ; but do we make the most of 
the principle of fraternity? We may be inclined to doubt it 
when we see around us political, economical, and religious 
Bchism. Fraternity is, however, an essential condition of life in 
a democratic community, and this I propose to show to the 
youth of your schools assembled here to-day. I want to show 
them, within the limits of a short address, that liberty and 
equality alone, unaccompanied by the spirit of fraternity, are 
not in themselves enough to make a strong and permanent 
democracy; liberty and equality make citizens, but fraternity 
alone can make a fatherland. 

What is our country? l''ou are taught that it is a great 
family, of w^hich all the members are brothers ; but social science, 
the natural history of society, goes further still — it establishes a 
closer bond between the children of the same country. 

Now, social science teaches us that our country is nothing 
less than a great living body, like a plant or an animal, and 
that all its members are as necessary one to the other, and as 
dependent one upon the other, as are the members of our own 
bodies. This mutual dependence and necessity is called 
solidarity. In the living being, head, heart, lungs, all the 
organs live one by the other, and therefore should live one for 
the other; here, then, is, as it were, a preliminary sketch or out- 
line of fraternity. Only, in the animal and plant, the solidarity 
of the organs is as yet material and forced; in this case 
imperious nature, as in the old apologue, says to the limbs, the 
stomach, the heart, the lungs, and all the organs, "Live in 



318 APPENDIX II. 

concord, in harmony, and fraternize, or you die!" In onr 
country, on the other hand, the solidarity of all the members 
depends on their consent, and therefore deserves the more 
beautiful and more human name of fraternity. True fraternity 
is Yolimtary solidarity , it is the solidarity of hearts. 

Without fraternity, liberty would become anarchy and the 
tyranny of the strong; without fraternity, equality would 
become a universal levelling down and degradation. We, as 
citizens of modern states, wish to be free, and we wish to be 
equal — a noble ideal ! Liberty aTid equality are social advan- 
tages we exact from others, fraternity is the social virtue we 
exact from ourselves; liberty and equality are our rights, 
fraternity is our duty. 

Be careful, therefore, not to understand by fraternity — as is 
too often the case — a kind of vague and quite platonic senti- 
mentality ; you must, on the contrary, recognize in it a scientific 
law which regulates the very constitution of a state, and 
especially of republican states. To the republican state 
fraternity is no mere luxury, it is a necessity. In some forms 
of government, union is made and maintained by force; in 
others unioa alone is able to create and to maintain power. 
The honour of the latter, and their peril, too, as Montesquieu 
pointed out, is to live by the civic virtues and to perish by the 
vices of their members. A monarchy may, strictly speaking, 
be content with a forced cohesion among its members; a 
monarchy may find a kind of material unity, an artificial and 
external support, in the immutability or heredity of certain 
institutions, in dread of the " powers that be," in subjection to 
tradition and privilege; to a monarchy fraternity is not indis- 
pensable. A republic, on the contrary, is compelled to main- 
tain within itself a complete internal and moral unity, a vital 
centre towards wliich the wills of all may freely converge and 
in which they may be blended. Our country is therefore like a 
living fortress, every stone of which is kept in its place as it 
were by a single hand and a single will. Once hands are un- 
clasped, hearts divided, and wills at variance, the wliole build- 
ing collapses from its walls and towers to its foundations. Ah! 
gentlemen, and you, children, who will be our country in the 
future, never forget that each of us keeps in its place some part 
of that great national building ; our fraternal grasp must not 
be loosened, our wills must not be at variance, our hearts must 
remain united if France is to be great and free. To this end^ 



APPENDIX II. 319 

let us translate fraternity from the realm of wordy to the 
realm of facts; let us give it its place everywhere, first iu tlie 
moral and intellectual and then in the econoniic and politic 
order. 

However high we may flatter ourselves we have attained in 
the intellectual order, we can escape neither solidarity, which is 
the natural law of minds, nor the duty of fraternity, which is its 
natural consequencCo Have we a single idea which is absolutely 
our own, and of which the germ is not to be found in tho 
generations that have preceded us ? No ; we can no more think 
alone than live alone ; we find solidarity in all human intellects ; 
through time and si3ace they lend a mutual helping hand. In 
the past they have contributed to make your intellect what it 
is; in the present their acquiescence and very contradiction aro 
necessary to it, A great reformer like Descartes in vain 
endeavoured to forget " all that others held bef jre him ; " he 
could not; he would have to forget the very words of his 
language in which we hear in lengthened cadence the echo of the 
centuries. It was idle for a great poet like Lamartine to say — • 

"II faut se retirer, pour penser, de la fuule, 
Et s'y confondre pour agir." 

No, we cannot withdraw entirely from the influence of tho 
human race — even to think; our country and our race think in 
us and with us, and our loftiest ideas are precisely those in 
which the whole of humanity recognizes its own accents. 

The man who is deaf to this voice and who rejects this 
fraternity of minds is self-exiled from an intellectual father- 
land. Single in his opinions, alone in the pride of his own 
thoughts, he is intolerant of the thoughts of others, for he 
believes them entirely unconnected with his own. Intolerance 
is the egoism of thought. 

In the domain of moral and religious belief the forgetfulness 
of intellectual fraternity is called fanaticism. It is a matter of 
indifference whetlier fanaticism is religious or anti-religious. 
It is always an aflirmation or a negation elevated to the dignity 
of the absolute and only truth, in forgetfulness of the fact that 
it is only a part of, and not all, the truth, and that, as Herbert 
Spencer finely puts^it, in every creed is a " soul of truth." It 
is tliis universal soul which should be presented to all children 
of the same country and which should animate them with the 
same spirit. In India, there once lived a sago, whose ideas 



320 APPENDIX II. 

were so broad and whose actions so noble, that after his death, 
the disciples of Mahomet and the worshippers of Brahma, 
disputing with each other the honour of having inspired his 
conduct, wished to divide his remains; the legend proceeds that 
on opening his tomb they found nothing but fruits and flowers ; 
and these they shared. Let us be like this sage, children, and 
let us leave nothing behind us but fertile seed, flowers, and 
sweet scents ; the best is what all can share, the purest ideas 
are those with which all can agree. 

Diderot, a philosopher of the eighteenth century, to whom a 
statue has recently been erected, seems, in spite of his pro- 
fessions of materialistic faith, to have had a suspicion that even 
the most sceptical may find common ground with the faithful 
upon certain peaks of thought, and there unite with them in 
common invocation. Addressing God Himself, he says, as did 
Pascal and Kant, " Some affirm Thee, others deny Thee, but the 
idea of God should nevertheless inspire my conduct ; God ! my 
actions shall be as if Thou wert looking into my soul ; I shall 
live as though in Thy presence." 

And it is especially in dealing with the instruction of the 
young that we should endeavour to bring minds on to the 
common ground of the loftiest and most universal ideas. This 
you. have clearly seen, gentlemen, and when your society 
introduced into the instruction given by the State that 
** religious neutrality " prescribed by the law, you understood the 
spirit of that law. The law equally excludes disguised hostility 
to the religious sentiment, contemptuous indifference, and that 
affectation of absolute silence which, as one of your most 
eminent members, M. Buisson, has put it, would be "the 
Puritanism of neutrality." Under the various symbols of the 
infinite is a common basis of noble thoughts and generous 
aspirations from which the mind of a nation cannot be abruptly 
wrenched without injury to the principle of moral and 
intellectual solidarity. Even in morality is implied an idealism 
which is, moreover, necessary to education, especially in 
democracies and especially in France; foi France is idealistic 
by instinct nnd tradition. It is the honour of France to have 
placed her ideal of justice and fraternity on a pedestal so lofty 
that every nation may see and recognize it — such an ideal as 
we gave to America ; a statue of Liberty enlightening the world, 
will be reared aloft and receive the homage of all the navies of 
the earth. 



APPENDIX II. 321 

If we pass from the moral to the economic and political order, 
we recognize once more the law of solidarity and fraternity. 
How easy it wonld be to seek and find a remedy for the 
industrial crises which cause so much suffering, if labour and 
capital, instead of fancying themselves enemies, were convinced 
of the necessity of their union! Similarly in the political order, 
party -warfare tends to the dissolution of all government. 
What do parties degenerate into when they lose the sentiment 
of that patriotic agreement which should always underlie their 
very antagonism? They become factions. On the other hand, 
parties worthy of the name of constitutional parties, be they 
conservative or progressive, never forget that they need each 
other and that their country needs them all. There is no con- 
servation possible without progress, for a nation which does 
not advance falls back, and falls back all the further because 
other nations are pressing on. On the other hand, no progress 
is possible without conservation; if the progressive spirit 
accelerates the motion of the whole, the conservative spirit is 
like the fly-wlieel of a m.ass of machinery, regulating the motion 
of the whole by its inertia and resistance. Those who are 
impatient want to break abruptly with the past, forgetting that 
not abrupt change but continuity is nature's law — evolution, 
not revolution. Animals, like the batrachians, begin modestly, 
breathing under w^ater through their gills; later they have 
lungs and breathe in air. Would you deprive them of their 
gills under the pretext that lungs are a superior organ ? 

As with organic progress, so social progress is made patiently 
and not impatiently. There is solidarity between the future 
and the past ; the future can only issue from the past through 
the jDresent. To long to outstrip the whole of humanity, to 
long to spread our wings and soar ahead, taking no count of 
those who drag wearily behind, is an illusion! Progressives, 
there is solidarity between you and tradition ; free-thinkers, there 
is solidarity between you and believers ; between you, savants, and 
the ignorant ! It is idle to cry, " We are the forward party, we 
rise and soar towards the future, our pinions are spread in free 
space ! " Ah ! your pinions ? Well, you cannot even start 
without the fulcrum of the rest of the body ; the heavier mass 
that you scorn nourishes and sustains you. Without your 
fulcrum, poor wings, you will become lifeless matter, the sport 
of the winds, and your leap into space can only end in a speedy 
return to earth. 

23 



322 APPENDIX II. 

A nation is like a regiment on the march moving as one 
man. That is not a true fraternity which is ever launching 
itself further and higher, regardless of its fellows. True 
fraternity regulates its progress by the powers of the weaker, 
stretching out to them a helping hand, bringing them on and 
supporting them, nor does it hesitate to humble itself with 
those who are called the humble. 

All of us, gentlemen, who wish for progress and no retreat, 
must endeavour to appease quarrels and dissension; internal 
discord would be the suicide of liberty. Let every child on 
leaving school take with him, not a spirit of false independence, 
but a professed sentiment of the bond which unites all natives 
of the same country ; let him feel that, in civic as well as mili- 
tary life, discipline is a form of solidarity, and respect for the 
law a form of national fraternity. The nation itself is an army 
in which all of us, side by side, the same heart beating beneath 
each breast, march together towards the distant horizon and the 
unknown future. The greater the difficulties before us, the 
more necessary is union. When our soldiers landed on those 
distant shores from which we have recently welcomed their 
return, did they dispute over the different colours in our national 
standard ? No ; they looked at it and said, " That is the symbol 
of the country thai is wherever we are, of the law made for all, 
of the fraternity which should unite us; wherever this flag 
waves I shall go; if I must die in its defence, I shall die. 
Forward ! " 



APPENDIX III. 

ADDITIONAL NOTE UPON PROJECTS OF REFORM IN 
GERMANY AND IN FRANCE, 

I SAID on p. 56 that no dictionary is allowed in the German 
maturitat certificate; I should have added, save a Latin-German 
dictionary for Latin prose. 

At the same examination I should have said, no questions are 
asked in physics or natural history, except in the case of candi- 
dates educated at private schools or hi/ private tuition. 

In the gymnasiums there are not always special teachers for 
science, but this specialization has been the rule for some time. 

The recent speech of the young Emperor of Germany on 
pedagogic reform confirms, on the whole, my criticisms on the 
gymnasiums — abuse of philosophy, cultivation of erudition for 
its own sake, linguistic over-pressure, inadequacy of the course 
in moral, social, and economic science — and philosophy. But to 
find the evil is one thing, and to find the remedy is another. 
To imagine that we need only shout, " Down with Latin prose ! " 
to deliver the new empire from the three curses mentioned in 
the emperor's speech — the "socialists" who threaten, the 
" unclassed" who complain, and the "journalists " who criticize, 
would be a great illusion. We have seen that as long as it is 
easier than ever to win diplomas without Latin and Greek, and 
that too after a course of study more attenuated and of shorter 
duration than before, the number of the " unclassed " will 
increase. As for the "journalists," their numbers will not 
decrease because their instruction has been less complete ; the 
only change will be in the quality of their prose. Germany owes 
part of her power to the sound and permanent organization of 
her gymnasiums; if she now tries to "Americanize" them, that 
is her own affair ; our business is to maintain in our democracy 
a true and complete literary, moral, and philosophical culture 



324 APPENDIX III. 

at as high a level as possible, while paying due regard to the 
lawful claims of science and its applications. 

The proposals of the German commission are confined to in- 
creasing the role of German in the school course, without sup- 
pressing Latin and Greek, which are still to remain obligatory 
in the entrance examinations to the uniyersities. 

I owe the following communication to the kindness of a 
very distinguished teacher in one of the great Prussian 
gymnasiums : — 

" Be careful to note that the commission is confined to ascer- 
taining the opinion of our best pedagogues on various points. 
Its ' resolutions ' are but the basis upon which a further com- 
mission of seven members will draw up a programme of reform. 
The more essential of the resolutions adopted by the commission 
are as follows :^ 

" A. Two classes of schools or institutions will be retained for 
the pur})ose of secondary instruction. (1) Gymnasiums, teach- 
ing Latin and Greek; (2) schools teaching no Latin (Latein 
lose Schulen; Ober-Eealschulen and hohere Burgerschulen)." 
We know that there were a few higher Eealschulen in which 
Latin was taught and not Greek. These bastard schools are to 
be suppressed, to the advantage of a real and complete classical 
training. " The number of lessons in the gymnasiums is to be 
is decreased, especially those in Latin and Greek. Latin prose 
to be suppressed; Greek exercises to be cut down; classical 
instruction in future is to be coniined to an introduction to 
literature and the reading of various authors. Great stress is to 
be laid on the German languages and on German and modern 
history. 

" B. Energetic reform of examinations, especially the maturi- 
tdtsprilfungen. More Latin prose, more Greek translation. 
Latin no longer spoken in the maturitatsprufungen. The masters 
of the highest classes are to judge from the reports on their 
pupils during the last years of school-life of their fitness for the 
university. The masters will be empowered to dispense with 
the examination in history and religious knowledge in the case of 
the best students. 

" C. The maturitdtsprilfungen certificate will give admission to 
all the faculties at the university. The certificate from the 
higher EealscTiulen will only give admission to the technical 
schools (techniscJie ffochschulen). This secondary diploma may 
be later completed by a supplementary examination in Latin 



APPENDIX III. 325 

and Greek. Every stnclcnt from the higher Bealschuhn may bo 
admitted to examinations for the state services by a special 
examination durwg his university career, and mainly in Latin 
and Greek. 

" As for the wider importance attached to German, we need 
only refer to a decree issued long since, but not put into 
universal practice. Instruction must be entirely directed to 
serve as a basis for the knowledge of German. We know that 
every lesson, Latin or Greek, may be directed to this end. 
This only depends on the method and the master. None of 
the serious charges levelled by the emperor at gymnasiums in 
general can affect the gymnasium to which I am at present 

attached. Our gymnasium at X has never lost sight of 

national or practical interests. This is well known. . . . 
Fortunately, this is not an isolated case; but on the other 
hand, many gymnasiums are behind ns, and no longer supply 
the requirements of the present day. The emperor himself 
has called the schools that have already been reformed to the 
attention of those teachers entrusted with the duty of drawing 
up the new programmes. They are to visit and carefully 
inspect these schools and their methods. 

" In addition, it is proposed to be more exacting and more 
severe with respect to the masters, and to require from them 
a more ample and more genercd training than hitherto. For this 
purpose the salaries are to be increased, it being admitted that 
the i:)resent salaries are hardly large enough." 

Tlaese, then, are the reforms which have caused such com- 
motion, and which our French reformers compare with their 
own projects. Latin, and Greek are retained in the lyceums, 
and are obligatory for entry to the universities, medicine, law, 
pedagogy, holy orders, etc. It is true that students from the 
real schools are permitted to complete their diploma by Latin 
and Greek, in order to qualify for following a university course. 
This is the gist of the whole reform, and although it is certain 
that a loophole will be left for the admission of interlopers 
to the universities, they will be expected to pass in Latin 
and even Greek. All students will have to satisfy in — a 
German essay ; Latin exercise ; French exercise ; mathematics ; 
translation from Latin and Greek authors, etc. In a word, it is 
merely a question of quantity — less classics and more German. 

With this reform — startling enough in the letter, but 
relatively cautious when put into practice— let us compare the 



826 



APPENDIX III. 



ruin of classics which is being planned in France by the 
institution of a system of French instruction, shorter and easier, 
and sanctioned by diplomas of equal value to the classical 
diplomas. 

We learn at the last moment that at present the authorities 
intend to found a system of "French classical instruction" 
covering five years of study and followed by an examination. 
Students who go on for a sixth year will go through a course of 
French rhetoric. Those who wish to pursue their studies still 
further, may take up philosophy or elementary mathematics. 
This but justifies all our fears. It is simply our present 
"special" instruction unjustly giving admittance to the classes 
of rhetoric and philosophy, and finally to the State schools. 
The inevitable result will be the desertion of the classics. 
Boys will say, " In five years I shall arrive at the same goal as 
my school-fellows — and that after superficial and easy work, 
without the patient efi"ort required by Latin and Greek." 
Parents will say the same, and, in addition, they will have the 
very convenient option of withdrawing their children from 
school after five, or six, or seven years, as they please, and in 
each case after a complete course of instruction. If the children 
stay on to the seventh year, they will have the same titles and 
diplomas as those who have undergone a full classical training. 
It would therefore be a miracle if the long and laborious 
classical system found any partisans except a few bigoted 
admirers of our great national traditions. When the " special" 
system was really " special," it was intended for special classes 
and answered special needs, whence arose its raison d'etre as a 
distinct and short system of instruction, constructed with a view 
to the average commercial and industrial requirements; but to 
turn it into a pseudo-classical system, equivalent to the real 
classical training in the mental culture given, will be a fatal 
argument against the study of the dead languages. If a system 
of "French" instruction, easy, simple, and short, is enough, 
what is the good of any other? And if it is not really an 
equivalent, who will be any the wiser ? The " really classical 
elite" will speedily be reduced, as I have shown, to an insig- 
nificant and impotent minority, or confined to the clerical 
schools, which are already delighted at our blunder. As for the 
class in philosophy, it will be idle to open it to all comers — even 
to those who are unfit for it from want of previous classical 
training — for very few will be heroic enough to attend it, and 



APPENDIX III. 327 

the rest will take up mathematics or physics as more " nsefiil " 
subjects, and straightway our State schools will be crowded 
with students who will be destitute of any sound culture. 
Science will establish its supremacy at the expense of literature 
and philosophy. The teachers, and perhaps the lawyers, of the 
future will alone remain faithful to Latin and philosophy under 
the new regime. Then it will be discovered that after all Latin 
and Eomau law are not necessary to lawyers, and that one can 
become a teacher after a purely French training. The ruin 
of our classical instruction will at last be complete. France 
will become a great Belgium. 

When we have a living organism which gives ample proof of 
its vitality— as did our system of secondary education before it 
was tampered with— is it not pure madness to destroy it or to 
endanger its vitality, under the pretence of seeing if another 
organism, as yet unborn, would not do work better ? We know 
what we shall lose, and we cannot see what we shall gain. 
There is no doubt whatever that it is not necessary for every 
one to have a classical training, but those who have received a 
classical training should not be placed on an equality with those 
who have not. Germany sees this clearly enough ; we must not 
make this mistake in France. 



INDEX. 



Abitubientenexamen, 5G, 2G1, et 

seq. 
-^Esthetics, 226, et seq., 304 
Algebra 62, 302 
Ampere, 166 
AngiuUi, 248, 267 
Arcliimedes, 47 
Arithmetic, 301 

Army, remission of service in, 146 
Arnold, Matthew, vii. 
Astronomy, 74 
Auto-suggestion, 12 
Average, law of regression to, 18 

Bain, Professor, xi., 63, 91, 109, 231 

Bernard, Claude, 148, 166, 200 

Bert, Paul, 167, 189, 224 

Berthelot, 79, 167 

Bigot, viii. 

Biot, 73, 93, 166 

Bismark, 50 

Blauchard, 65 

Boisser, 137, 144, 229 

Bossert, 155 

Botany, 39, 301 

Bre .1, 144, 227, 236 

Browning, 160 

Bruneticro, 94, 123, 168 

Buissou, 182, 320 

Burdeau, 229 

Butler, Bishop, vi. 

Cesca, 127 
Chemistry, 63, 300 
Clievreul, 11 
Clirvs'al, Professor, 134 



Civic instruction, 204, et seq., 306 
Classics, a pledge of disiuterested- 

nes:;, 8 
, their influence on French 

literature, ch. ii., 105-135 

, value and necessity of, 133,303 

, reforms in favour of, 188 

, modern, 138 

Colajanni, 22 

Collins, Churton, 112 

Comte, 6S, 81, 96, 105 

Condillac, 287 

Conduct, 16 

Cosmography, 77, 302 

"Cramming," 271 

Crime, 22, et seq. 

Crookes, 289 

" Cycles," instruction in, 1 48 

D'Alembert, 88 

Darwin, 3, 31, 272 

Daryll, 31 

Delboeuf, 13 

Democracy, 9 

Descartes, 37, 47, 71, 75, 82, 98, 

103, 200 
Dietz, ix. 
Doctors, philosojiliy useful to, 254, 

et seq. 
Dubos-Ecymoud, 69, 88, 167, 177 
Dumas, 29S, 302 
Duruy, 137, 164 

Education, power of, 10, et seq. 

and evolution, 33 

, a moderu, 136, et seg. 



330 



INDEX. 



Eloquence, 238 
Environment, adaptation to, 8 
Ethics in education, 193, et seq. 
Euclid, 47. Vide Geometry 
Evolution and education, 33 

• in pedagogy, 94, et seq. 

, mental, 102 

Examinations, 261, et seq. 

Fanaticism, 319 

Fascination, 11 

Ferneuil, 176, 280 

Fichte, 49, 92, 

Flaubert, 119 

Forces, idea-, power of, 10, et seq. 

Formal, culture, 57 

Formulas, 16 

Fornelli, 94, 121, 123 

Fouillee, ix., xi. 

Frary, ix., 94, 125, 157, 218, 283 

Fraternity, 317, et seq. 

Frederick III., 51 

Fiencli art, 8, 243 

language, imd Latin, 114,ef seq. 

schools, lyceums, viii. 

ecoles speclales, viii. 

Galileo, 63, 75 
Galton, 18 
Geography, 304 
Geometry, 302 
German Emperor, 51 

universities, 266 

schools. Vide Gymnasium, 

Realschule 
Glazebrook, vi. 
Goering, 104 
Grad, 50 
Greard, 137 
Greek. Vide Classics 
Guyau, ix., 1, 13, et seq., 30, 35, 70, 

94, 114, 211, 237, 273 
Gymnasium, viii.,56,chs. iii. and iv., 

174-192, Appendix III. 

Heraclitus, 2 
Herbart, 97 
Hereditary nobility, 42 
Heredity, 18 

History, 110, 218, et seq., 303. Vide 
Natural 



Hoenig, 49 

Humanities, 5, 105, et seq., classical, 

bk, iii., passim 
, modern, 138, scientific, bk. ii., 

passim 
Huxley, 37, 63, 82 
Hypnotism, 12, el seq., 268 

Ideas, force of, 10, et seq. 
Iilealism, necessary to science, 37 
Idleness, unpatriotic, 215 
Instruction, results of, 29 

, objects of, 44 

, cycles of, 148 

, aims of secondary, 87 

, primary, 55 

, civic, 204 

, historical and political, 218 

,sesthetic and literary , 226, eiseg'. 

, " special," 174 

Intellectual education, objects of, 
33, et seq. 

James, "W., 268, et seq. 

Jesu ts, the, 57 
Joly, 23 

Kant, 76, 92, 102, 211 

Kepler, 36 

Knowledge, its unification, 195 

Lachelier, 55, 94, 116, 234, 246, 290 

Lafitte, 42 

Language, a social force, 15, et seq., 

99 

. modern, 154, et seq., 303 

Laplace, 166, 198 
Latin. Vide Classics 
Lavisse, 219 
Lebon, 157 
Legislation, 307 
Leibnitz, 47, 62, 98, 200 
Lie'bault, 13 
Liegeois, 13 
Literature, 99 

, sestlietics and, 226, et seq. 

, debt of modem to classical, 

112, et seq. 
Locke, vii. 287 
Lockroy, 160 
Logic, 312 



INDEX. 



331 



Maxeuvrier, 107, 150, 182, 2^9, 

246 
Marion, 193, 204 
IVIatliematics, 01, et seq., 302 
]Maximation, 17, 208 
Memory, overloaded, 72 

, process of, 271 

Mental philosophy, 311 
Methods, 93, 235 

, passivity in, 200 

Mill, J. S., 68, 219 

Modern languages, 153 

sy&tems of education, bk. iv., 

137, et seq. 
Moltke, Von, 51 
Monodeism, 12, et seq. 
Montjiolfier, 47 
Morals, 34, 195,209 

Natural history, 65, 300 
Naturalist school in pedagogy, 231 
Nature acts for the race, 32 
Newton, 37, 47, 75, 98 
Nobility, an hereditary, 42 

Organization of subjects, 5 
Over-prtssure, 29, et seq., 201, 275 

Pascal, 37 

Passivity, 200, 235 

Patriotism, 214 

Pestalozzi, 231 

Philosopliy and secondary instruc- 
tion, 87, 247, et seq. 

higiiCr education, 264, et seq. 

nt-cessary for the teacher, 

256, et seq. 

in education, 193, et seq. 

Physical edur-ation, 28, et seq. 

Physics, 62, 299 

Physiology, 65, 300 

Poetry, 238 

Political instruction, 218, et seq., 
306 

economy, 305 

Population, dtcruaso of, 52 

Precocity, 101 

Primary instruction. Vide Instruc- 
tion 

Pioudhon, 49 

Psittacism, 62 



Psychology, 110, 268, et seq. 
Pythagorizing, 84 

Rabier, 94, 108, 175, 234 
Eiice, education of the, ix., et seq., 2 
Ptavaisson, 94, 232 
Real-gymnasium, 174-192 
Realism and the realschule, 179 
Realschule, viii., 131, 150, 167, 174- 

192 
Regression to the average, 18 
Religious V. moral instruction, 212, 

et seq. 
Renaissance, physical, 1 
Renan, 34, 42, 94 
Renouvier, 94 
Ribot, 26, 42 
Rotation of crops, xi. 
Rousseau, 49, 231 



Sanscrit, 117 

Savants, 93, 252 

Schaarnhorst, 50 

Scherer, 285 

Schools. Vide Gymnasium, Real- 
schule, etc. 

Schopenhauer, 32 

Science scholars, after-career of, vi. 

,link between literature and, 4 

, faults in teaching of, 60 

, educative power of, 36 

, social. Vide Social 

, the humanities in, ch. iii., 

71-93 

, objective character of, 34 

, religious, 82 

, limits of, 89 

, organization of, 91 

, teachers of, 298 

Secondary instruction. Vide In- 
struction 

Selection, 3 

of genius and superiority of, 

7, 41, et seq. 

, psychological, ch. i., 10-27 

, social, ch. ii., 28-32 

, sexual, 31 

Sentiments, the, 15, 34 

Socialism, 51 

Social science, 195, et seq. 



332 



INDEX. 



Sociology and education, 1 
Solidarity, sentiment of, 321 
Soranambulism, 12, et seq. 
Sfiecializiug, 5, 67 
Stature, average, 18 
Stendhal, 241 
Stephen, Leslie, 22 
Suggestion, 12, et seq. 
Sully, 28, oiote 

Table-turning, 11 
Taine, 232 
Tarde, 23, 110, note 
Teachers, itifluence of, 128 

, philosophy and, 257, et 

Tennyson, ItJO 
Thamin, xi. 
Thiers, 222 
Thought-reading, 11 
Traditions, 110 



Translations, value of, 118, 168, 237 
Tyndall, xi., 82, 90 

Unity in secondary education, 139 
Utilitarianism, 9, 47, et seq. 

Vaihinger, 97 
Vauvenargues, 86 
Verses, 118 
Vico, 34, 101 
Virchow, 90 
Vogt, 72, 91 
V(nsin, 13 
Volkerpsychologic, 110 

"Woman, education of, 171 
and natural selection, 31 

Zeller, 267 
Ziller. 98 



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